But the harder way is better, if it teaches a child that fear of pain is not the best reason to choose the behaviours Mum and Dad approve of. Many parents who use the cane say they do so because they were caned themselves as children. Perhaps the reason most of us survived unscarred is that the world was a different place 20 or 30 years ago, and children grew up knowing far more stability than they do today. Life for a child today is completely changed. Most families have lost that comforting buffer between the home and beyond, and the rest of the world comes pressing in early via the Internet, a horde of unseen friends who influence, and a craving for independence in early teenhood.
Kids do grow up much faster, seeing far less of their parents.
There is hardly an area of life in which we look to the way things were done 30 or 40 years ago and repeat them in the hope of achieving success today. Not in school, not in the workplace certainly, and not even in our free time or how we spend our holidays. There's a big information gap here. We don't know where to look for the answers when numerous situations leap up unexpectedly as baby grows up, begins school and starts proving himself imperfect, after all. The answer tells you why so many take the easy way, and raise the cane.