Cultural / Context information for the jury

In the Philippines, punishing your child is an accepted form of discipline and is even part of Filipino culture. This is due to a lack of awareness of the possible effects of harshness on kids. The thinking is since most parents grew up with the same “harmless” practices, their children will turn out fine too. Common physical punishments include, but aren’t limited to, spanking with slippers or whipping a kid’s bottom with a belt. This is passed down from previous generations where punishments were even done in school (i.e. making kids kneel on rice grains if they misbehave in class or the teacher using a meter stick or ruler to whack children’s hands). It’s also quite common for some parents to practice emotional manipulation. When a child misbehaves, parents scare them that policemen will take them to jail, or threaten to abandon them or ignore their cries or pleas totally.

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Ugly Babies is an effort to spread awareness and educate Filipino parents in an attempt to effect culture change on common parenting practices that are too harsh on children, like physical punishment (i.e. spanking, whipping), and emotional manipulation (i.e. fake threats, ignoring a child completely). Parents think these practices are harmless so we partnered with a popular artist known for sculptures of monstrosities, and created an attention-grabbing artwork to show how “harmless” can actually be ugly. The statues were made from the innocent toys that kids were most likely to throw a tantrum for. We placed this in the mall where families spend most of their time, specifically where kids were most likely to misbehave, like toy stores or gadget shops. The art itself has a QR code that leads parents to educational interactive content on YouTube that shows them the real effects of harsh parenting on their kids.