My immediate reaction to seeing Dan’s post, ‘California Mulls Spanking Ban‘, was to decide to write the following response:
I reacted when I first saw this issue brought up in the blog-sphere. Shortly afterwards, though not in connection with my reaction, I saw in the comments to blogs several defenses for such a ban amounting basically to the following argument: ‘Since I have never spanked my child, and since he or she is now a gainfully employed, law abiding adult, I know that the power to spank a child is not a necessary tool for child raising and that therefore it should be removed on the grounds that it is abusive to children.
But since the bill in question that first time around was a fringe offering, and as I felt that further attempts to ‘defend’ my right to employ what has throughout history been an acceptable tool for use in the raising of children serves to legitimize the claims of those who wish to deprive me of it, I chose not to respond to that argument nor to others equally specious.
This time around I will similarly not engage this wickedly harmful, power grab of an argument.
All I will say to the modern man, who sees a child not growing into an animal and winding up self supportive epitomizing parental ’success’, ” I will rebel before I allow you to condemn my children and the children of my people to modern man mediocrity through limiting my ability to educate.”
That was what I was going to respond when I first read Dan’s post. Then I read his link.
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1 comment:
I did spank my children when they were younger but it was not the only form of punishment I used.
Mostly I spanked because their safety relied on their ability to obey me instantly –and if the threat of one or two swift ones on the bum ensured their obedience I was willing to do so but I always founded it a rather limiting tool. It can convey a simple message – don’t do that or get spanked but if there was a moral or complex lesson which needed to be learned I found it failed miserably.
I see the anti-spanking crowd as good intentions run amuck or as good intentions makes for bad law. Most of the anti-spanking crowd wants to end the physical abuse of children (which is a cause even I would support) but the banning of spanking will not do so and might even put a child in jeopardy wherein a parent has no authority or ability to control a child’s behaviour.
Parents who physically abuse their children already break a number of criminal laws. The law is hardly lax nor is enforcement rarely an issue anymore. What I believe we should all keep in mind is that good intentions usually always makes for bad law.
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