Adult survivors of childhood punishment describe their punishers with ambivalence, not simple condemnation.
Evidence
Third: relationship complexity. Almost without exception, the adults in Ward’s study described the person who punished them in terms that refused simple condemnation. “He was doing his best.” “She was under enormous pressure.” “I understood, even then, that this was how she had been raised.” The survivor experience resisted the narrative the questionnaire expected — the narrative of clear-cut damage caused by clear-cut harm. The reality was messier, more ambivalent, more human. — , The Rod and the Child, 8418