Joe Jackson complains that parents today are too 'soft'
theGRIO REPORT - Joe Jackson, the patriarch of the infamous Jackson family of performers, argued that parents today are too 'soft' when it comes to disciplining their kids on a recent episode of CNN's 'Piers Morgan Tonight'...
Joe Jackson, the patriarch of the infamous Jackson family of performers, argued that parents today are too “soft” when it comes to disciplining their kids, on a recent episode of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight.
“Yeah, they are too soft. One of the reasons I say that is because kids nowadays are killing their parents in some cases,” Jackson said. “Let’s get into this ‘beating’ thing. There’s no such thing as ‘beating a kid.’ You whip them or punish them over something they did, and they will remember that. And they’ll remember it in such a way that they won’t do it again. That’s the way I was.”
Jackson has been accused of beating and physically abusing his children in the past, most notably by the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson documented his father’s alleged abuse in his autobiography Moonwalker and in several subsequent interviews.
His father admitted spanking his son but always denied that he crossed the line.
“I whipped him with a switch and a belt…I never beat him. You beat someone with a stick,” Joe Jackson told the BBC in 2003.
In that same year’s controversial Living with Michael Jackson special, the singer told interviewer Martin Bashir that his father “practiced [the Jackson Five] with a belt in his hand.”
He also described his father beating him with “iron cords” or “whatever’s around.”
“Throw you up against the wall as hard as he could,” he added.
“I remember hearing my mother scream ‘Joe you’re going to kill him, you’re gonna kill him, stop it, you’re gonna kill him.’ And I was so fast he couldn’t catch me half the time but when he would catch me, my God, it was bad, it was really bad,” said Michael Jackson.
The legendary artist once told Oprah Winfrey he would get physically ill just being in his father’s presence and some have even claimed his notorious affinity for plastic surgery was driven by a desire not to resemble his father.
Joe Jackson however, defended his parenting skills on Piers Morgan.
“I’m glad I was tough, because look what I came out with,” he said. “I came out with some kids that everybody loved all over the world. And they treated everybody right.”
