To spank or not? Let the town vote.

[CShine]

BROOKLINE, MASS. – It happened years ago, but Deborah Lindeman recounts the moment as if it happened yesterday. Her mother, chastising her, hit her so hard that she left a hand print on her 11-year-old's thigh. Stunned, they both cried for 25 minutes.

"We review our lives as parents with some pain, I know we all do," says Ms. Lindeman's mother, Susan Goldstein, who also has a clear memory of when her own father hit her with a belt after she had crossed a street without looking both ways. "I don't like power as a way of solving problems.... We just took it for granted."

Corporal punishment as a means of discipline has been entrenched in US culture since Colonial times. Attitudes have evolved over the years, but Thursday night the town of Brookline, a suburb of Boston, faced possibly the most radical public shift in approach to the divisive issue. Its citizens were scheduled to vote on a controversial resolution that encourages parents and caregivers to refrain from corporal punishment of children. If passed, Brookline would be the first US town with such a resolution, says Jordan Riak, founder of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education in Alamo, Calif.

"These kind of things tend to start at the local level and rise to a more global level, and I suspect that they're reaching for legislation that would make illegal," says Julaine Appling, acting director of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin, who supports judicious spanking and worries about infringement on parental rights. "It sounds very precedent-setting to me."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0604/p11s02-lifp.html

[Book Lover]

1. I am against spanking, however

I am also against setting this kind of thing to a town vote, even if it is only a nonbinding resolution. We have laws that address abuse; I would suggest augmenting those laws if you want to stop spanking as an accepted means of discipline. Again, I myself do not spank, am against spanking, and do nto support those who defend it under the rubric of parental rights. I think there is a better way to say it than via a nonbinding town resolution.

[TroubleMan]

2. Well we know what this place thinks:

Pretty harsh.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

3. We all grow up as the detainees in Abu Ghraib. Geneva Conventions for kids

Go up to another adult at a bus stop and hit them. Welcome to jail.

Parents hit children a fraction of their own size. Good discipline!

Oh, and young children are forming their nearly permanent perspective on whether violence is a useful tool in life. Hey-everyone in power is violent. Guess might makes right and ethics don't matter.

And some wonder why violence is perpetual in the world. Gee, where ever does it come from? How could Abu Ghraib possibly happen?

Values are caught, not taught. Don't hit children.
That's how Bush* became the horror show he is. Barb hit him.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1033904,00.html
(So George, How Do You Feel About Your Mom and Dad?)

[Trillo]

4. The last time my Dad tried to get ready to "spank" me,

while he was forcibly taking me to the "spanking area", I turned around, knocked his hands off of me, then grabbed him and shoved the SOB down a flight of stairs. It was one of those karate style fluid movements, when I took advantage of a moment of opportunity. Pure self-defense.

He never touched me in anger again.

If I ever had a child, which I most assuredly do not want, I would choose not to spank: it's not really effective for training, and it has deleterious side effects.

[AndyTiedye]

5. Some Learn to Enjoy It

which rather lessens its usefulness as discipline.