An incident which saw two women lock a crying toddler in an aeroplane toilet has sparked an online debate in China on how to manage children in public spaces.
The incident went viral on the Chinese internet after one of the two women, Gou Tingting, posted a video of herself carrying the girl inside the cubicle.
In her post, she presented herself as trying to help others on board, but was swiftly met with backlash.
Having spent my childhood in Asia, child abuse is more or less normalised there. The social expectation is that adults are infallible authority figures and children are meant to be obedient at all times (i.e. absolutely quiet).
I also wonder if 20th century social and political turmoil caused many Asian parents to have anger issues and in turn, cause generational trauma. One reason I dislike the idea that Boomers were handed everything to them on a silver platter is because it neglects the fact that much of the world were former colonies. And the post-colonial status of many countries had been very rough-- experiencing inter-ethnic and international wars, proxy wars (Vietnam War and Soviet-Afghan War comes to mind) and corrupt dictatorships that do not invest well in their people causing poverty.
These turmoils and trauma caused many unresolved psychological issues. The victims of these strifes then become parents, who take out their issues to their children. And in turn, these children become parents who believe that hitting their own children constitutes as good parenting, because that was how they were raised.