What is with parents abusing children in stories to make them better?

NotaNuffian

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Oh and by children being abused I am specifically talking about 1-7 Year old learning to fight and kill. One story a 1 year old must run from his grandfather to get into a house every day, or lose his privilege to eat lunch, getting stabbed as part of the "training".
... fuck me that is just not the way to go.

Or is it of a different world? Or even just a different era? With different culture?

Because yes, with our modern day glasses, we can be clear to say "SHIT, THAT IS CHILD ABUSE!!!"

But in a different world, their lifestyle might be different. All we have to worry about is the supermarket has no toilet paper while they might be worry that a monster stampede might happen and gone the entire village gone.

So to them, to toughen up straight from birth becomes something crucial. Don't touch the fire, beware of monsters, learn what things you can eat when lost in wild and hide from things that want to eat you.

Don't whimper in pain and slow yourself down, run, run like the wind to live.

In spartan they are taught to steal to live, gets beaten to death if they were caught and live like monsters than humans.
 
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Yeah, My main issue when the child in question should not be able to cope physically in anyway, older than 5 maybe, but under? Not if its a human child, no matter how OP.

Had to re edit as it was two sentences inside one and I had not removed the second one to make what I said clearer.
well my comment was meant as a joke. I don't know if you noticed how absurd what you wrote was.
and at such levels of absurdity logic doesn't matter anymore. mental and physical capabilities of children are often grossly exaggerated. i just multiply their ages by ten, seems to make more sense that way.
 

aattss

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If the protagonist is ten years old in a fic about fighting, then either the author/target audience is ten yeas old, or the author doesn't understand what children or time-skips are.
 

BenJepheneT

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Why do so many Isekai stories have child abuse disguised as "training"? It is not how real effective training of anyone child or not works. Some training programs use high stress training to weed out people during the training period. But it is not part of skills training. It is used to test their resolve and ability to work under stress.
Forcefully making kids skip meals when they fail. Is another abuse example. That hurts their growth more than just getting beat up and stabbed.
Look chief, we look down upon child abuse as well as anyone else, or that I HOPE you do.

Now that we've established that child beatings bad, I can now answer your question of why isekai stories, or stories in general disguise child abuse as training. Simple answer is because it's been done before to GREAT effects, and the abuse you're mentioning are pale imitations of 'em.

But if you want the elaborated answer, here you go:

I'm sure Berserk needs no introduction. If you've read through the manga from start to """finish""", you can see that Le Black Swordsman didn't have a good childhood. But it was through that hardship of a childhood that you get the mega tank you see in the Golden Age arc. Now, I'm not saying you have to throw a kid into a pit of wolves to make him a giga swordsman, but for what the story is trying to tell and the tone it sets, that is what happened and that is the result of it. By no means does Berserk try to conflate his hardship with his glorious skill. Hell, glory barely comes for dear Guts throughout the manga. It's just a nonconsensual means that's led to this end, and has always been treated like this.

I'm not saying Berserk is the key influence to this trope, but I'm bringing Berserk up as an example. Notable mangas or comics from the past have used the "punished child becomes the strong MC" as a way to establish their characters. You got the fatherless Batman, the cursed destiny of Hellboy, and so on and so forth. The pain defines the character, not just their strength but their character as a whole. But as always, there will be poor imitators looking to get a taste of the pie without working for the slice.

Hence, you get these tropes, where the children are thrown into absolute hell by their parents/guardians and we're there to watch as they crawl back up a bigger man than before. This is the easiest cop-out you could ever make. Right from the get-go, you have a pre-established past signified by the parents, an easy, glanced-over backstory of "child goes through Dante's Inferno's worth of hardship", and an automatic absolution in the question for the MC's strength because, well, if they can survive Satan's trials as a kid, they can definitely survive the real world. It's a free pre-established character wrapped in a little neat tie, like an author's favourite ready-to-eat meal.

And as for whether it's realistic or not, lmao ofc not. You and I have seen so many arguments and discussions about swords vs spears and magic elements and stances and what not to easily end on the conclusion that realism is ultimately a situational dressing for your story depending on what kinda tale you're putting out. If we were to apply your idea that child abuse training is unrealistic to a story like Baki, then Baki would just fucken suck, since the whole story runs on insanity as a baseline for its throughline. That concept works more on grounded stories, where the realism adds a needed flavour to make it THAT more memorable for readers with an eye for detail.

TL;DR: People do "child abuse training arcs" because it's an easy cop-out for a strong character. No, it's not realistic, but it doesn't mean it's automatically bad. The trope is low-tier, yes, but when used situationally, it can be a good starting point for a story.
 

aattss

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If the "training" is actually considered abuse by the story, I think it might not be what the OP was talking about.
 

Anon2024

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It's because it's easy to sympathize with those abused and it makes it easier to "feel something" for the characters. I kind of find it to be lazy writing.
 

NotaNuffian

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