I finally found this. I love to relate this to anyone who comes up with justifications and denials about child maltreatment:
Cutting Off the End of the Ham
There’s a story about a newly wedded couple cooking dinner together for all the bride’s family. The new husband watched his new wife prepare a ham. She removed the outer wrap, cut off the end of the ham, and then threw the end of the ham into the trash under the sink.
“Why’d you do that?” asked the husband.
“It’s how my mother has always done it,” The new bride replied.
“Why’d your mother do it?” asked the husband.
“I don’t know,” said the wife.
“Could you ask her?” said the husband.
“Sure,” replied his wife, eager to please her new husband.
The bride went to her mother and asked, “Mother, when you cook a ham, why do you cut off the end and throw it away?”
“It’s the way your grandmother taught me to do it. You’ll need to ask her,” said the mother. So the bride went to her grandmother with the same question.
“Sweet child,” the grandmother laughed, “I cut off the end of the ham because the ham was always too big to fit into the pot!”
Sometimes we develop our parenting and relationship beliefs in much the same way. We mimic what we’ve heard and repeat what we’ve been taught without question. Why don’t we question what we’ve heard and been taught? Because, in most cases, we’ve been taught by the people that represent authority in our life. People we trust. People like are parents.....teachers.....and other adults in our lives.
Those people have, in the same way, been taught by people that they trusted and loved, so beliefs and practices continue unhindered and without question down through many generations.
Here’s where we make our mistake. We confuse the people that we love with the belief that they hold. The example in the story is clear: the new bride would have continued the practice of cutting off the end of the ham and throwing it away if her husband hadn’t asked the question, “Why do you do it that way?” The bride could have easily said to her husband, “Honey, this is the way it’s always been done. This is the way my mother taught me and if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for me. Honey, be quiet, accept it, and leave well enough alone!” Now if that would have been the bride’s attitude, the practice of cutting off the end of the ham would have gone from her to her children, her grandchildren, and so on.
Now consider this – after enough time passed and enough people died, no one would have known or remembered the reason for cutting off the end of the ham.