Forming a parenting strategy in opposition to that of her parents
Streater resolved to raise her children differently than she had been raised by her parents. Her father beat her and her mother tried to talk through problems. As a parent, she and her husband reversed these roles in a way, with Streater taking a more aggressive, although nonviolent, approach to discipline.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Jessie Streater, November 10, 2001. Interview R-0165. 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
- BARBARA COPELAND:
-
About discipline, how did your parents discipline you all and do you use
the same strategies, did you use the same strategies with your
children?
- JESSIE STREATER:
-
Well, my mom she talked a lot. My dad he didn't talk at all.
He didn't care what the explanation was or anything. He was
ready to beat. In my house I did a lot of yelling. My husband he was the
calm one. He didn't do anything. It was all my disciplinary
actions. The kids didn't pay me much attention because I
could hear them outside the window one day saying little girl was
saying, ‘I'm going to tell your mom,’
and my daughter said, ‘I don't care.
She's not going to do anything but holler at me.’
So evidently mine wasn't all that great either.
- BARBARA COPELAND:
-
Would you say then that your discipline strategy was like the opposite of
how you were raised. Because you said that your dad was the more
disciplinarian one, and so now you were the more. So it switched.
- JESSIE STREATER:
-
Yeah. Very much so because my husband he's just so calm and
patient. He just let them run over him. Somebody had to step in and take
over. It was me.
