I got into an email-based shouting match with a relative today. I found out (from shoulder-surfing my mom while she was on FB) that she wants to use the Pearls' methods of child abuse discipline, as detailed in To Train Up A Child, on her firstborn daughter. You know, the book-turned-free-PDF that has a parent talking about how a child should have his or her will broken by the age of one year? The one that says children should be conditioned to immediately obey any command to avoid getting beaten? The one has has parents deliberately putting their kids into dangerous situations (near a pond, by an open stove, holding a gun...) and saying "No" to teach them obedience?
I read bits of TTUAC in order to better argue with my relative and found myself so severely disgusted I had to close the tab and look at kittens and corgis for a while. It's a manual for child abuse, wrapped in smug "righteousness". She insists it's not abuse, it's simply g-d's model for families and even goes so far as to claim anyone who doesn't beat their children hates them. Let me say it in internet shouty text: THIS BOOK ADVOCATES BEATING CHILDREN FOR ANY OFFENSE, NO MATTER HOW MINOR, UNTIL THEY SUBMIT COMPLETELY TO THEIR PARENTS.
If that's not child abuse, I'll eat my fedora with a fuckton of hot sauce and wash it down with razor blades.