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The
minor
atrocity
you are hearing involves a "traditional family
values" response to
a less-than-perfect report card.
Does what you are hearing MAKE YOU ANGRY?
Does
what you are hearing
BREAK
YOUR HEART?
Does
what you are hearing MAKE YOU SICK?
Can
you
imagine how it would feel to be this little
girl? Imagine
you
were a child and the person who was supposed to nurture
and protect you
was
torturing
you with a belt
instead?!?!
If
a prisoner of war were treated this way, it would
constitute a violation
of International Law. But because it is a
little child in the
home, the events you are hearing would be legal in all
50 U.S. States and
most other countries.
Apologists
for "spanking" drench their rationalizations
in cutesiness
and cloying euphemism: "heat to the seat," "loving
discipline," "godly
chastisement," "a potch on the toosh," etc.
But
what is "spanking, " really? It is UGLY...
just like the sounds
you are hearing now.
"Spanking"
is not an "act of love."
"Spanking"
is a form of hitting.
Hitting
is violence,
not "love." "Spanking"
is family violence
against children/rationalized
as
"discipline."
"Spanking"
as been expressly banned
by law
in over a dozen countries and defacto banned in the over
100 nations signatory
to the U.N.
Declaration
of the Rights of the Child.
Children
learn how to behave by watching and imitating their
elders. "Spanking"
models hitting behavior to a child. It teaches a
child that the people
you love
are the people you hit, and
that the people who love
you are the people who hit
you.
So is
it any wonder that adults who were physically punished
as children are
significantly more likely to engage in spousal abuse
than adults
who weren't?
"Spanking"
as a solution to childrearing problems is no better than
heroin
as a solution to personal problems. In the short
run, both seem to
"work"- making problems disappear. But in the long
run, both "spanking"
and heroin solve nothing. They only make problems
worse. Recent
research shows that the more children are spanked,
the more their behavior
deteriorates
over time compared to other children the same age.
The
mother whose voice you hear believes that this cruel and
degrading treatment
will improve her child's school performance. In
fact, physical punishment
of children is statistically associated with increased
drop out rates and lower
average IQ,
not
with improved grades.
Fear
diminishes
rather than enhances a child's ability to learn.
Children learn best
when they are excited, interested and engaged, not
when they are
afraid.
Children are intelligent creatures. Hitting them in order to train them is harmful and unnecessary!
Physical
punishment once permeated Western society: husbands beat
wives, teachers
beat students, abbots beat novices, officers beat
enlisted men, police
beat suspects, the judiciary beat petty criminals,
masters beat apprentices.
Every last one of these classes of formerly-beatable
people has now won
legal relief except one: children.
Below is the response of a young woman after listening to this sound file:
"I
am sitting here crying and I can hardly see. That
girl screaming
and
begging
was
me dammit. My mother did that to me almost
everyday for something
or another. Every little thing I did. I was
made to pull my
pants down and lay on my stomach on my bed while she
"spanked" me with
my dad's belt. It is so horrible to hear that
sound file.
"I
used
to wet the bed until I was in second grade. I got
the belt every
morning
because
I wet the bed. My own 5 year old wets the bed. I
want to
grab my mother and shake her and ask should I beat my
daughter for it?
For sticking my tongue out at my brother, or looking
mean at my mom, or
not saying ma'am
or
talking
in church. Stupid little things warranted me a
spanking.
It's
so
hard to live with it now, to deal with it. I
have nightmares of hitting and hurting my mother, and
screaming at her.
"I'm
depressed
all the time. I yell alot. My husband
doesn't understand because
he was spanked with the belt and "is fine." Well I
am not fine.
Very far from being fine! And one of the
worst things, I can't
go to my mom and scream at her for it and ask her
why. She regrets
what she did and she is very sorry for abusing me.
So I have nowhere
to put my anger from the abuse. I turn to
scratching my arms, inflicting
pain on myself. I am so messed up from how I was
"disciplined" I
don't even know where to start getting control of
myself. I can't
sleep at night b/c I'm scared my bladder won't be empty
enough and I keep
going to the bathroom. I'm scared to speak my
mind. I walk
on eggshells around people. I can't believe people
think it's ok
to spank, especially in that way. My mother
did it with good intentions.
She thought she was right. But *I*
know
it's not right!
"I
wouldn't
dare hit my daughters like that. Why do I know it's
wrong and others don't
(my mom?)? Hearing that file was like being back
in my old bedroom
again. I actually felt the pain. I hope soon
people will realize
how wrong it is to hit children and it will end.
My abuse started
back with my great-grandfather and was passed down to my
mom, and it ended
with me. I hope all the lines of abuse will end
soon. I can't bear
it."
Children
remain legally hittable not because there is one single
scrap of evidence
that they benefit from it or "need" it. Children
remain legally hittable
for only one reason: because they have the least
political clout.
Previous
generations witnessed the end of corporal punishments
for other classes
of persons. It is time to finish the job. It
is time for the
violence to stop. It is time to end "spanking" NOW!