LOCKED: people are getting too heated over a silly meme
go to s/parenting if you want to have a serious conversation about parenting
(it wasn't me, who downvoted your comment, just in case)
I've been getting a lot of those on my comments here. As far as I can tell, it's mostly entitled parents who can't acknowledge how their selfish choices have created a living hell for their children.
Are those consequences from AI?
They were allegedly written by Joshua Wilkinson, who has a bio at the end of the article and in the "about" page of the website, but he did not cite his sources. I am unsure how to verify that he is real or that he didn't use AI to write the article.
I tried to find a study specifically about long-term consequences of being forced to bathe as a child, but found none. Apparently forced bathing is a kink for some people, and "forest bathing" is also a thing, both of which might be polluting the results of my query. But maybe there is nothing to find, no study conducted on the topic yet.
The closest I could find is a study about forcing children to endure medical treatment:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0969733019833128#bibr3-0969733019833128/
But it's a qualitative study that seems to focus more on the caregivers than the patients, and it is behind a paywall.
Personally, I don't think it's a stretch to say that forcing a child to do anything, even something good for them like getting vaccinated, can be stressful or even traumatic. In the case of bathing, it's something that might happen repeatedly, even daily.
I did not enjoy baths as a kid. They took too much time. My mother chose to give me rag baths sometimes instead of a full bath, but sometimes she would scrub aggressively to vent her frustration. Looking back, maybe she was trying to get me to choose the full bath. It didn't help that we had five people and one bathroom, so by the time I was done filling the tub and bathing there was almost certainly someone waiting at the door.
Obviously, that is anecdotal. But I believe forcing a child to bathe is harmful. My parents were southern baptists, authoritative and violent. I have many problems, but am feeling noticeably better since cutting contact with them. I have therapy next week.