Adjusting parenting styles as adults based on childhood experiences
When Geraldine and J.T. Ray became parents, they purposefully rejected some of the traditions they had to endure as children. They remained strict, however, on the issues of discipline and corporal punishment.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Geraldine Ray, September 13, 1997. Interview R-0128. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
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When you guys had four children, did you make a consious
decision to raise them differently than you had been raised?
- GERALDINE RAY:
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Yes, yes.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
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In what ways?
- GERALDINE RAY:
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In a lot of ways . . . uh when we were growin up lets say
like if you had company; all the preachers was to come to
your house at that time and you always had to stand back and let the
old folks eat and you ate what was left. That was one thing that we
said we wasn't gon put our children through. If they couldn't eat
when we eat, then wasn't nobody else gonna eat. So, that was one of
the things and you always - I think most people try to do
that - you try to make life a little better for your children
than what you went through with, because some of the stuff you went
through, you don't want to put children back through it. But, we
always made them mind. They were spanked. We didn't let them get by.
If they was told to something or go somewhere and be back at a
certain time, they was to be back. And so that they did.
