{"id":55790,"date":"2023-02-04T17:04:58","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T17:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/?p=55790"},"modified":"2023-02-14T15:18:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T15:18:09","slug":"uncovering-vocation-spanked-the-sanctioned-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/2023\/02\/04\/uncovering-vocation-spanked-the-sanctioned-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncovering Vocation &#8211;\u00a0 &#8220;Spanked: The Sanctioned Violence&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Christina Erickson, Social Work on January 24th, 2023<\/p>\n<p><em>Reading:\u00a0 By Anne LaMott <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My coming to this vocation did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another.\u00a0 Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved. \u00a0 I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made.\u00a0 Yet each step brought me closer to the verdant pad on which I stay afloat today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Uncovering Vocation Christina Erickson 2023.01.24\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zAZQHBq8QT0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Good morning &#8211;\u00a0 I have been a social worker for 30 years and I felt like that gave me an easy out on this vocation stuff\u00a0 \u2013easy, it was my work \u2013 which I described as making the world a better place. Becoming a social work professor was a natural evolution of that original vocational path.\u00a0 I was set. No more discoveries to be made. What I never expected, was a mid-life vocation that would grip me for more than 10 years.\u00a0 Like Ann Lamott describes, I can look back and see how I leapt from lily pad to lily pad through the course of my life, never knowing that those experiences would become so important to a mid-life vocation I couldn\u2019t have imagined.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 1<\/strong>\u2026..My mother\u2019s spanking \u2013 so futile, so \u201cnot into it\u201d, her swings and misses.\u00a0 My own wriggling away.\u00a0 My father\u2019s spanking \u2013 so scary, so shaming, having to stop himself because he was big and strong. My 3 older brothers spankings,\u00a0 \u2013 so harsh, so much anger in both directions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My family of origin, the family I grew up in, was happy, I felt loved, we were loud, we laughed, 5 children and 2 parents who were high school sweethearts, pregnant before they were married despite strict Catholic upbringings, we were fine and good and my parents spanked us.\u00a0 My parents hit us.\u00a0 They never hit each other, they never hit the dog, but spanking a child on the butt\u2026.that was acceptable, anytime, parental decision alone, no child input needed.\u00a0 In spanking, the perpetrator is always right and the victim is always wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 2<\/strong>\u2026.my high school boyfriend. We met in the tennis module of gym class.\u00a0 We were separated by gender (this was 1984) through the whole unit until the end when the ranked boys played the ranked girls.\u00a0 He was ranked first in his gender and I in mine.\u00a0 We had to battle it out, and while I lost handily, it was love, love.\u00a0 We started dating.\u00a0 2 years into our high school romance I punched him in the stomach in my parent\u2019s basement family room.\u00a0 I have no memory of why, but I remember the event vividly.\u00a0 My anger, my punching, the look on his face.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 3<\/strong> \u2013 I go to graduate school in social work and begin my field experience at The Initial Intervention Unit in child and family services.\u00a0 We were the first social workers to visit a home or school with a child abuse investigation. I see the effects of hitting on little bodies. I see the pain and shame of parents who have to talk to us. I feel their struggle, I see their love for their children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 4<\/strong> \u2013 I\u2019ll read a section from my book &#8211;\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>I suddenly saw that if I hit my kids, it was the same as hitting my high school boyfriend, back in 1986 (the other parent of my children by the way).\u00a0 If I hit them too, I would be the face of modern domestic violence.<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 5<\/strong> \u2013 I am captivated by spanking.\u00a0 I cannot stop thinking about it.\u00a0 Its nearly obsessive.\u00a0 It is like a veil has been removed, and I begin to see spanking everywhere.\u00a0 I am at the park, and see a child spanked for hitting his brother when it was really his little brother that hit him first, my friend tells me why she spanked her child and I am supposed to be supportive, on the news a child dies from injuries from their parent\u2019s discipline, my perspectives on my children are clearer and I begin to see my own fears and frustrations shadowing my perspective of their childhood.\u00a0 Were they really naughty or am I scared or ashamed or perplexed for them.\u00a0 I start writing my thoughts down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 6<\/strong> \u2013 This place.\u00a0 Augsburg.\u00a0 URGO \u2013 Undergraduate Research and Graduate Opportunity program. I decided I need to learn about spanking by using frameworks I understand \u2013 that&#8217;s research.\u00a0 Through URGO, (Check URGO out, this is a blatant commercial) I mentor a paid student researcher and together we study the history of school corporal punishment. From the 1600\u2019s leading up to its current use today (19 states allow paddling kids in schools \u2013 yes, with a stick).\u00a0 I was really obsessed now. The student and I get an additional URGO funded research project \u2013 a policy analysis of school corporal punishment laws in all of those 19 states.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 7<\/strong> \u2013 I keep writing what I see and hear and learn, I start gathering literature, and before I know it I\u2019ve got sections and chapters and I think I have crafted a book proposal.\u00a0 I submit it.\u00a0 It&#8217;s accepted for publication.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lily pad 8<\/strong> \u2013 My sabbatical \u2013 I go all out now.\u00a0 Lit review, ten 30 page papers I cannot wait to write. I smile while I write.\u00a0 My mid-life vocation makes me happy. My mid life vocation even saves me when hard times show up in my life\u2026. It was my anchor, my prayer, my sanity in an insane world and an insane time of my life. Remember I thought my vocation was to make the world a better place,\u00a0 my vocation turned out to make me a better person.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I spent 10 years shaping my thinking about spanking, revisiting what I thought was a benign event in the lives of children.\u00a0 I moved from \u201cmaybe we shouldn&#8217;t do that\u201d to a full on belief that the legal assault of children is happening every day, in homes all around us.\u00a0 It has happened to most of us, and many of us have perpetrated spanking. I feel empathy for kids and their parents, and realize that whether we are being hit or hitting \u2013 it is harmful to both of us. It\u2019s time to leave spanking where it belongs \u2013 (pun intended)\u00a0 behind us. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Christina Erickson, Social Work on January 24th, 2023 Reading:\u00a0 By Anne LaMott My coming to this vocation did not &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":505,"featured_media":55791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261,165,182,181,264],"tags":[44,214,176],"class_list":["post-55790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-ministry","category-christensen-center-for-vocation","category-events","category-staff","category-vocation","tag-chapel","tag-storytelling","tag-vocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/505"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55825,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55790\/revisions\/55825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}