Boston Herald – Tuesday, November 27, 2007, via Overlawyered.com:
Parents who spank their kids – even in their own homes – would be slapped by the long arm of the law under an Arlington nurse’s proposal to make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to outlaw corporal punishment.
Kathleen Wolf’s proposed legislation will be debated at a State House hearing tomorrow morning.
If signed into law, parents would be prohibited from forcefully laying a hand on any child under age 18 unless it was to wrest them from danger, lest they be charged with abuse or neglect.
Spanking is a lot like abortion, in at least this sense; sensible people are opposed to both, but understand where they are sometimes necessary. It would be nice to live in a society where neither is needed, but we don’t.
Just as some people will persist in having sex w/out benefit of contraception, some children, at times, cannot be calmly reasoned with, and must be subjected to more drastic discipline, as long as they are not permanently harmed.
And regarding the well-intentioned but unfounded beliefs of younger, less experienced people, the idea that pre-rational, still-developing personalities can all, without exception, be disciplined by verbal reasoning is a fantasy. Some kids, due to whatever factors, sometimes simply will not obey unless given a swift, painful smack.
The very fact that countless hundreds of millions of children have been physically disciplined yet matured into normal adults is the best refutation possible, that of real-world experience.
Again – this law is a prime example of self-righteous ideologues deciding that they are right, and hence have the right to coerce others into following their beliefs. If you think that corporal punishment of minor children is child abuse, then you are the ones obligated to back that claim up with solid science. Otherwise, with all due respect, go shove those police-state laws up your ass, sideways.
We are talking about children here. You can’t reason with hyperactive children. They won’t pay any mind to an adult having a conversation with them telling the child what he/she did was wrong. All they care about is having fun, that don’t care if an adult is annoyed by it.
Corporal punishment is easly understood even by small animals. But that isn’t child abuse. Beating the crap out of your kids for no reason, often because the abuser is drunk or strung up on drugs, is child abuse.
Whoever wrote this law was probably was abused as a child by their drunk parents in a dysfunctional family.
@22 – “We are talking about children here. You can’t reason with hyperactive children.”
Nice switch… “children” became “hyperactive children’… Do you know ratio between “normal children” and “hyperactive children”?
“Whoever wrote this law was probably was abused as a child by their drunk parents in a dysfunctional family.”
Perhaps you should present some facts instead of assumptions, just like #12′s “another childless woman trying to dictate to parents how to raise kids.”…
Forget ‘hyperactive’ children… try ‘egocentric’ children, since that includes virtually all humans under the age of 8 or 9.
Children feel emotions long before they can apply reasoning.
I notice, Jäg, that you create a diversion instead of addressing the point both FARGaLOT and I made; there are times when children cannot be reasoned with, but must be disciplined.
And as I said, if you have some solid science to back up your contention, let’s see it. Hundreds of millions – no, billions – of years of real-world experience demonstrates conclusively that corporal punishment does no harm and is in fact a normal, sometimes required, form of parental discipline.
Prove otherwise, or your opinion is just that – and an ideologically-based one at that, meaning full of shit.
This blog used to be a lot sharper. All of these posts, and you missed the obvious:
SN, your daughter is looking well.
Ah, but James – our grasp of the obvious cannot begin to compare with yours…
And as for the picture, I believe it was intended to illustrate the desirable long-term side effects of spanking, especially enhanced gluteal development. ‘Course, I could be wrong…
The Following nations outlawed spanking:
Austria
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Hungary
Iceland
Israel
Italy
Latvia
Norway
Portugal
Romania
Ukraine
Sweden
Here si a site to see how many assaults there were in 2005:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass-crime-assaults
If you look the top three are ones that still alow spanking.
Violence as a problem solving tool is obviously useless. Not to mention that when these kids grow up they hit back at their parents in their dotage.
BTW Elderly abuse is on the rise. And its not solely physical, it is emotional and mental abuse with even stavation and dehydration used as weapons.
Becareful who you piss off now. When you are unable to take care of yourself they may pay you back with a vengence!
Cursor_
>>Violence as a problem solving tool
>>is obviously useless.
Hmmm. The USA is also Numero Uno in the number of reported rapes:
http://tinyurl.com/yrz5h8
beating out the competition (UK and Canada) by a huge margin. I guess our Abstinance Vow program isn’t working either. The kids don’t have consensual sex with each other, they just go out and rape somebody.
Fundamental scientific principle, to always be remembered when doing statistical comparisons; correlation ≠ causation. Period.
That a society that is made up in the majority of people who are averse to physical discipline also happens to be less prone to violent interpersonal crime is in no way surprising, nor does it suggest that the former is the cause of the latter. That is simply bad science.
The converse, the hypothesis that being subjected to physical discipline in childhood is unlikely to cause trauma or sow the seeds of pathological violence in adulthood is fully supported by billions of years of actual real-world experience, as already mentioned. If there were a causal link, the ubiquity of corporal punishment all over the world and throughout history would have resulted in a drastically higher propensity toward violence in all personality types, in all cultures, by at least an order of magnitude.
Children can be, are, and always have been physically disciplined without turning them into violent monsters, and it is a demonstrable fact.
Physical discipline leaves no damage, physical or psychological. Physical discipline is not abuse. Children have limited reasoning abilities, therefore there is at times no alternative to physical discipline. Facts. If you personally don’t think you should do so, then don’t. But making violating someone’s personal, subjective, scientifically unsupported preferences a criminal offense is totally unacceptable – except to self-righteous ideologues whose egos permit them thinking themselves incapable of error.
Truth be told, the spoiled, egocentric, amoral, rude young yuppie scum most of us in modern-day urban America are all too familiar with are the products, invariably, of such wonderful, discipline-free childhoods. Smarmy, childishly selfish fucks who no one ever said “no” to as children and backed it up with a dose of temporary physical pain…
Spanking deals directly with the hindbrain, ( No pun intended) bypassing the higher reasoning centers. Once your ass knows certain behaviors are verboten, your forebrain is less likely to entertain the idea of doing them.
30-
Exactly. If I was told not to do something, I waited until I thought I could get away with it. When I didn’t get away with it, I got my ass whipped. I didn’t do that “something” anymore.
Some of us just needed a good ass-whipping every now and then.
I’ve raised two kids. For the first one, we tried the discussion part at the early age and she ended up needing whippings on a semi-regular basic until she was a teenager (and still needed them after that). The younger one got swats as a toddler and hasn’t needed corp punishment since then.
Swat them early and be consistent or they never learn.
Yep, it’s conditioning, and very effective conditioning, at that.
J’ever notice? The human ass is made to order for disciplining children. Relatively severe short-term pain can be inflicted with zero risk of causing actual physical harm.
And this, O my self-righteous peacenik pals, is not a coïncidence.
hmm is that Jordan Capri?
Heh. Am I the only one thinking the post was simnply an excuse to use that picture?
Before you take the whole Commonwealth to task, you should know that the Massachusetts Constitution allows any citizen to propose any law they want and it must be submitted to the legislature as a bill. This citizen has apparently done just that. Not a groundswell of public opinion and likely not to go any further than the public hearing (in which the citizen is also entitled to speak on behalf of said bill).
Twenty five years ago, I was a legislative aide to a Mass. state rep. The constituent wanted to outlaw lemon dishwashing liquid, “cause kids might think it’s lemon juice.” That became a bill, too, and went through the same process and was deservedly killed.
Regarding #12′s comment, yes the legislator who proposed the similar law in California was ridiculed because she was not a parent, so where did she get off telling parents who to discipline their children? She ended up withdrawing her bill before it even got to committee hearings, even though it was apparrently supported by groups opposed to child abuse (her bill would have outlawed spanking only for children under 3 years of age).
I am a parent (now a grandparent) who only had to spank one of my children once and the other just a few times.
I think the danger in spanking is that it is all too often used as revenge against the child for disobeying or embarrassing the parent or as a shortcut for parents without the time or inclination to invest enough of their time in raising their kids. This type of response is not necessarily intended to help the child develop their own self discipline and is usually administered while in an angry state. THAT teaches children to react violently in difficult situations because parents are their mentors for good or bad.
Spanking is better utilized as a way to to help children experience a sample of the pain they are in for during a life of poor decisions. They need clear boundaries which include expected consequences they are familiar with which can include the discomfort of corporal punishment. It’s important that they learn there are consequences for bad decisions before they reach an age where life or the judicial system gives them a spanking that could last a lifetime. BTW, I agree that children under 4 years cannot understand the reason they are being hit and therefore should have that experience at such a young age. Sorry for going on and on but those are my thoughts.
Oops. I left out a word in response #37. I do NOT agree with children under 4 years receiving corporal punishment. That’s it!
AH, yes, I agree. The legislature is so much better at doing everything than regular people. All children under 18 should simply be taken away from all parents and raised by the state.
Having children that you don’t turn in to the state shall be defacto proof that you were planning to raise them improperly.
In fact, let’s take that to the next logical step as well. Outlaw sex and the making of children and the state will take egg and sperm samples from everyone it deems acceptable and put them together in a laboratory. That will prevent children from have to trauma of being raised by parents who would be a terrible influence on them.