ABSTRACT
While many of the parents of families seen in outpatient family therapy clinics lack firmness and expect too little of their children, we sometimes see parents who are in fact too firm, whose expectations of their children are far beyond what is age-appropriate. Often in these families there is a "spare the rod, spoil the child" belief system, where severe physical punishment is meted out, not as with enmeshed parents who lose their tempers, but in a cold, severe way. This pattern dates back generations in the family and is almost subcultural in its roots.
