Stepmum attacks child; dad ‘teaches’ unruly girl in new cases of abuse

Two recent incidents highlight how some mainland Chinese parents take discipline too far, ultimately harming their children.

In Foshan, Guangdong province, a 20-something stepmother admitted to beating her husband’s six-year-old son with a plastic pipe, sending the boy to the hospital with a haemorrhage, the Southern Metropolis News reports.

“I’m hot-tempered and irritable. He’s not my own child,” she told reporters on Tuesday. She added that the boy, from her husband’s first marriage, was not naughty but was too old to keep soiling his pants.

The boy’s injuries were discovered on Friday, when the stepmother took him to visit his grandparents, who noticed bruises around the boy’s eyes and head.

When the boy said his stepmother had caused the injuries, she initially said it had been other children. The grandparents alerted the police. An investigation is under way.

In Yichang, Hubei province, a father left his 10-year-old daughter in a cemetery at midnight to teach her a lesson after she played with fire, China News Service reports.