Pretty much. I think there is a psychic injury, but since there's no framework for perceiving it as such, and no validation for doing so, the culture supports the denial of any trauma meaning. The trauma comes from the event, but recognition of it as trauma isn't allowed into consciousness.

Understand I'm not saying the event isn't traumatic; part of that is my own cultural judgement, of course. I believe the injury occurs, but the meaning ascribed to it doesn't acknowledge that.

What your mother did by locking you out was horrible. Within our culture, especially in that weather, it's abuse. What's different is that, as you say, after about an hour, you realized you had options. That's because of the cultural norms you'd internalized.

In my example, the kids see/have no options. I witnessed this once in my neighborhood, and my friends and I were really in a quandary because we felt like we needed to do something, call someone, something. This went on from late morning until about 8pm. We relied on the advice of a native colleague who explained what was happening. She didn't approve of it, but understood it in context and addressed the issue in a very--to us--roundabout way involving other neighbors. I think it was effective in stopping the punishment to the extent that we never saw that child locked out again. But we also knew nothing of the family and what else went on, so who really knows?