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.
#1 – I see what you did there
Yet another pathetic bill from the People’s Republic of Mass.
No wonder they’re all moving to NH. At first I thought it was the taxes but I can see there’s more to it than that.
It’s the old “you only teach them to be violent” chestnut, I guess. How about this: “You teach them that there are times when violence is appropriate, and how to use measured force that fits the situation.” Unless, of course, you are a child abuser, but we already have laws against that.
Ah, yes, this should bring out one or two capable of a measured, mature response (not bad, #5).
And half a dozen tantrums from those mortified by the prospect of actual consequences to lashing out violently on a whim.
Yep. Just load them up with drugs. Spanking doesn’t do anything anyway but put them in line. We all obviously turned out with problems due to our parents spanking us.
Obviously there is not enough parents out there that spank. Start with the legislature of Mass.!
#5 said it.
and to expand on what #7 said – if spanking sends the message that violence is OK, what message does doping them up send?
and finally, count on this law, if it is passed, to be highly selectively enforced, as is usual for when the State overreaches.
I could have used a law like this when I was a kid. Not that I was ever spanked all that much.
One night my Dad and I were arguing about something really important to a five year old and I threw a punch that caught him just under the belt buckle and totally unaware. He went down. I thought I had killed him. He started to get up. I was relieved. He did not look happy. I ran like hell.
I don’t know who designed that little crackerbox of a house, but he saved my butt. I was able stay ahead of Dad long enough for him to start laughing.
Perry
Spanking and light bondage is HIGHLY encouraged at my place.
Violence starts where the intelligence ends.
Bravo Massachusetts!
another childless woman trying to dictate to parents how to raise kids. Yeesh. Great.
As any parent can tell you – by the time you have the experience to know what you are doing as a parent, you are no longer young enough to be fertile. Everyone is an amateur initially
I dont know,
I do believe, that hitting a Kid is NOT the best way to MAKE THEM THINK, or lead them to BETTER judgment.
I tend to believe that…
1. The first time, you ask them WHAT THEY WERE THINKING, and WHY they did it. Try to find a justifation for THEIR reasoning.
Discipline In such a way, to MAKE them THINK harder, or remove things they enjoy.
2. the second time, do about the same, to find out the reasons…
Discipline Harder if needed..Ask the Janitor to LET him STRIP, CLEAN and Polish the Gym floor..
3. third time, If he is still alive, as for a REASON, a VERY GOOD REASON…
BEAT the living HELL out of him(no evil left) and make him WISH he had died of multiple internal injuries rather then SCARE you, of his NEAR fatal stupidity..
Sad to say, the evidence continues to accumulate that Massachussetts, that once-great bastion of traditional “live and let live” true liberalism, is rapidly becoming a PC police state run by hardcore Marxist-inspired radical leftist ideologues, who “know” – naturally, being ideologues – with every bit as much certainty as their right-wing extremist counterparts that they are unquestionably correct and therefore have the right to mandate how you and I will conduct our lives.
#11. sending someone to jail is a very violent act. much moreso than a spanking.
Bravo Massachusetts.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’m an inmate of the Commiewealth of Taxachusetts. I got spanked when I was a kid, as did most of the people I knew as I grew up. Not one of us has ever had any altercations with the law. We grew up to respect authority.
Now the state wants to step in and tell parents what they can and cannot do in the process of raising their children? (This measure was introduced and defeated in California already a while back) Okay, fine. Take a look around and you can easily see all the spoiled children of baby boomers that never got a spanking: you’ll see drug addicts, criminals, smartasses, pregnant pre-teen girls, dropouts… in other words, brats that have no respect for the law or authority.
Yeah, let’s teach children that parents are powerless to discipline them and let them get away with murder. Pretty soon they’ll outlaw yelling, reprimanding them, or speaking negatively toward them at any time because it might undermine their self-esteem.
Remember: it’s all for the children. To hell with grownups and what they think is best.
In ten years Massachussets will be a slang for wimp.
I was never spanked as a kid–but I got paddled in high school.
I threw a spitwad at my friend and was told to stop. Did it again. My friend and I were sent to the principals office.
The principal said “Study hall for a week, or 3 swats, take your choice.” I thought “great, study hall is just fine.” My friend answered and said he would take the swats, so what choice did I have? Brought tears to my eyes.
From this I learned: Don’t be an idiot and do what your friends do, and don’t throw spitwads when the teacher is looking.
Don’t think I have ever told my parents. Don’t know if the school did. Valuable education that.
@16 “sending someone to jail is a very violent act. much moreso than a spanking.”
So, don’t hit your kid in the first place. But I guess some people are just too lazy to actually raise their kids… violence is the solution to all problems that takes more than a minute to talk about.
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.