Cymric wrote:
First, the Minister was not right. His goal was to prevent serious child abuse by outlawing any form of contact other than a soft touch in 'neutral' areas.
I don´t know the guy, but I tought he was trying to change an attitude. That why we got the law here in Sweden. Law and massive information campaigns before and after.
People who abuse their child will not be impressed one iota, and go ahead beating the child senseless anyway.
People who are already are doing it now, no. But the changed attitude might influence some borderlines.
Plus it doesn't do anything about psychological abuse, nor prevent other gruesome methods of torture. If you want to hurt children, you needn't do that by hitting them.
No arguement there.
Despite the fact I don't have any children, I can understand his worries and anxieties. But he is barking up the wrong tree, and fighting symptoms instead of working on, say, improved monitoring, keeping the anonymous hot line for child abuse open (it is most likely going to be closed), and making sure that all officials have the right information to have them step in quickly and quietly when necessary.
If they are closing that hotline at the same time then they are simply bigots!
Second, there is a not-so-subtle difference between hitting a child, and what I cryptically (and, in hindsight, rather anal-retentively) called administering a corrective, educational slap. With the latter I mean either a slap on the hand, or a slap on the buttocks. Never anywhere else, most especially the head. If you alter position, apply more force than you would apply during hand-clapping, or use anything other than an open palm, you're crossing the line. Period. That's when it becomes hitting, and people ought to seek out professional help if they did this more than once.
And are those people likely to do that?:-?
Finally, you really cannot compare hitting someone in the street with a slap you give a child when it's being headstrong, or throwing a temper tantrum.
NO?? How about the death penalty? Actually I think thats a better comparison.
That's why I have a hard time taking anyone serious who seeks to limit my (to be) paternal judgement by making the slap illegal.
And I have a hard time taking people opposing such a law seriously because if it prevents or lead to discover of just
one case of childabuse then it´s worth it.
Slapping children is nothing but a quick fix of the symptoms much like the drug use you talked about.
qouting myself:
Dan wrote:
The only thing that prevents a 3 year old from hitting back is the sheer physical size difference. Quite a few of those hair-, earpulling and pinching mothers kids get very good at kicking adults on the lower shins at a young age.
Now do these "little Kung Fu-masters" act the way they do?
Because they have no reason to obey rules other than avoiding punishment.
The problem is the general attitude about it in society, much like drunk driving.
When I was a kid in the swedish 80s in a middleclass area in the country side(either farmers or detached house owners, mortgage on the house almost paid off, 2 cars, wife working halftime, 2 kids and a dog and/or cats, an A500 or C64 in everyhouse) if somebody pulled their kids hair or ear the whole room went quiet and everybody stared, sometimes somebody elses parents even spoke up.
If there was a case of childabuse in the news everybody assumed that they was either alcoholics or religous wackos because sane normal people just didn´t do that.
It´s much like drunk driving, sure there has always been laws but not much happened before the promille limit got so low that there was no room for any experimenting with percentages. When ligthbeer or cider to the food was all that it was possible to drink before driving it changed the attitude. Did people pick the carkeys of drunk people at parties in the fiftys? Hell no.
