Siren Song of the Lazy Parent (or, Smack My Kid Up)

My parents used corporal punishment on me up until the age of 9 and according to my father; they stopped because I was afraid to come out of my room. The method in question ranged from spankings, to having my hair pulled, to being slapped, to being kicked once and even having a roast beef sandwich hurled at my head. One beating was so bad I ran away from mother straight into a glass door and shattered it, causing my right arm to bleed profusely.

That was roughly 20 years ago and the world was a bit different. These days if someone saw my father kick me in the behind for walking too far ahead of him at K-Mart, he’d most likely be arrested and I’d end up in foster care. At the very least, child protective services would be in our life until they deemed my parents fit for the job of caring for me.

Corporal punishment is a hotly debated topic in this country. Certainly many people now feel that it is never necessary to lay hands on a child and have found alternative methods of discipline that suit their fancy. Other folks think the aforementioned people are insane and believe that a limited amount of physical punishment is the only way to straighten a kid out. Caribbean women, at least those whom I’ve met during my time as a social worker, think that half of the reason why kids in America are so screwed up and disrespectful is because they don’t get enough good beatings.

From personal experience, both as a former child and a current social worker, I can tell you that physical discipline, in a vacuum, rarely works as well as those who use it think it does. The beating/spankings I received as a child only served to teach me how to absorb physical punishment and rarely did I change my behavior strictly because of the pain I was suffering. Approval, affection and consistency had a greater effect on my development than did the spankings. All the physical punishment did was turn me on to mosh pits and kickboxing.

Along side of that, I rarely come across a woman who is the victim of domestic abuse and as such permanently changes her behavior. That of course is the point; if it’s wrong to hit a woman for any number of reasons, shouldn’t it be wrong to treat children in the same manner, given the fact that the results would presumably be the same. None the less, folks still swear by their supposed right to whack their children and claim to their dying breath that nothing works quite as well.

Social services and local law makers have been struggling with this debate for many years now. Throughout the country the laws regarding corporal punishment change depending on the tenor of that locality. Some more conservative areas are more likely to tolerate spankings than your more liberal cities. In addition to that, whatever the political philosophy of said place might be, it comes up against the hard reality that there may not be enough child protective services investigators or empty beds available to accommodate overzealous monitoring of parents.

This hasn’t stopped Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber of California from attempting to pass a law in which spanking, hitting and slapping a child under 4 years old would be a misdemeanor and offending adults could face up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Now the merits of this law are debatable. For one thing, enforcement of such a law or abuse of said law risk making it a complete joke or a tool to harass people. Not to mention that it strikes me a bit silly to equate spanking on the behind with real abuse such as burning a child or using weapons on them. One child I worked with in Brooklyn had her head caved in by her father. That is abuse by almost anyone’s measure and certainly a lot more harsh that an open handed pat on the behind. Yet a law like the one Lieber is proposing would make them one in the same. For those that oppose this law, stating the above would be reasonable.

However, lazy parents like Rush Limbaugh have been lamenting this proposal since last week and seem to be almost depressed that someone would dare tell him and other parents that they can’t hit their kids. First of all, you shouldn’t want to hit your kids and if you do, consider your own anger management issues before going anywhere near a child. It is one thing to think that attaching a bad behavior to pain is a proper method of teaching discipline, other wholly another issue of you are complaining that you should have the right to go around slapping your offspring willy nilly.

As per usual in the mainstream media, this story is a contrast in extremes. On the one hand you have this Lieber gal whose heart is in the right place as her aim appears to be to protect infants but probably isn’t being practical. On the other hand you have this army of lazy parents out there who are crying because they think this law means they can’t hit their kids when they damn well feel like it. The reality is that despite the best of intentions, no law will totally protect all children and it is better to educate parents than it is to punish and imprison them. By the same token, even if there is some value in corporal punishment, it should only used sparingly and only with the accompanying talk about right and wrong.

When right-wingers like Limbaugh whine about this subject they take the position that if you can’t punch a kid right in the mush you are inviting a “Lord of the Flies” type world in which the kids have taken over. It’s insulting to those of us whom have to patrol and treat real abuse and terrible parenting on a daily basis.

There is a better way to deal with children without disarming the parents through law or letting children be at the mercy of angry parents. Talking helps and consistency is the key. There are any numbers of ways to instill boundaries in children without abusing and that is something to be celebrated not denigrated Mr. Limbaugh.

This topic and more will be discussed on Sunday at 12:30 PM on the next episode of Progressive Conservatsim Live!