I did not have a Dickensian childhood. I had more than enough to eat, unlike orphaned Oliver Twist. I had the love and attention that was denied to poor little David Copperfield. I was not forced to scavenge in graveyards, like Pip from “Great Expectations.” All in all, it was much more “Brady Bunch” than “Bleak House.”

But there were moments when either of the parental units ― usually dad ― would explain to my butt those things that my mind was unwilling or unable to process. This is a roundabout way of saying that I sometimes got slapped on my roundabout.

I lived to tell the tale of the thwacking on my tailbone. So did my siblings, who also had the occasional run-in with an open hand or hairbrush. Our crew yielded five relatively well-adjusted adults who, while we may not be paragons of virtue and accomplishment are also not appearing regularly on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

That’s why I was a little taken aback by the uproar over what Adrian Peterson did to his son (or sons, if the news reports are accurate.) Actually, I wasn’t really taken aback at all, just saddened. Yes, I felt bad for the little boy who is now known as “the kid whose superstar father beats him.” I felt sad for his physical pain, which I’m thinking is a lot less than the embarrassment of having to go to school as the “kid whose superstar father beats him.” I also felt bad for Adrian Peterson who has now become the child abuse equivalent of Ray Rice: Enemy Number “Next One.”

The reason I feel bad for Peterson is that he grew up in one world, and is now living in another, and no one seems to have told him when there was a shift change. Like many of us who were born before SpongeBob became the go-to guy for babysitters, corporal punishment and child abuse were not necessarily synonymous. Not all child abuse involves physical contact, and not all physical contact constitutes child abuse. Unfortunately, in this day and age, we seem to be unwilling to grasp those nuanced differences, because we are so paranoid about always doing the right thing.

This has seeped into the way we look at the occasional, overwhelmingly benign instances of parental negligence or what I like to call the “oops factor.” When I was a kid, leaving your child in the car on a hot day with the windows open while you ran into the Penn Fruit for some groceries (including Jubilee cupcakes for the progeny) was not a federal offense. Now, it is enough to get you profiled on Nancy Grace.

When I was a kid, yelling at your child in the middle of said Penn Fruit while she was playing Skee Ball with the oranges (this is just a hypothetical, mind you) was not only acceptable, it was applauded by the other adults within hearing range. Today, you will get stares, glares and pursed lips from the mothers who, if it were their child, would gently coax the disruptive urchin to “take a deep breath, relax, and think about how the nice grocery store employees feel about having to clean up the mess.” These are children who will be in therapy well before those employees hit retirement age.

And when I was a kid, getting tapped on the derriere with a hairbrush or a spatula or a rolling pin or even a nozzle from the Hoover was considered justifiable retribution for being a smarta-, not grounds for a grand jury indictment.

I understand that the dangers to children are greater, now, than they were in the 1960s and 1970s when I was growing up. Either the predators and perils have numerically increased, or we are just more efficient at bringing them out into the light of day. Good for us for being vigilant, since the innocence of a child is the most fragile and precious commodity in society. (And yes, good for us for making the Catholic Church accountable for its complicity in some of the worse instances of crime.) But I think that this hyper-focus on the sex abuse scandals of the recent decades and the simultaneous increase in the idea that “everyone should get a trophy” has artificially inflated our sense that children should not be touched. Ever.

I’m here to say that while Adrian Peterson may have overstepped the bounds in hitting his child with a “switch” and drawing blood, his initial motivation was the same as the motivation of my parents, and generations of parents before them. They loved us very much, and didn’t have the slightest intention of hurting us. To them, “abuse” was spelled “l-o-v-e” and they would have been shocked to be told otherwise.

Adrian Peterson and I, and maybe you, grew up in a time where there was a lot of gray in the interactions between man and woman, child and parent. Now, it seems, there’s only black and white.

I’m glad I grew up when “oops” didn’t lead to a mug shot

By Christine M. Flowers

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Readers may send her email at cflowers1961@gmail.com. ― Ed. 

(Philadelphia Daily News)

(MCT Information Services)