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Talk the CasbahNews Scoop! Snooping on the Scooter suit

Compiled by Geoffrey AndersenUpdated Friday, Feb. 2, 2007, at 6:34 AM ET

(Continued from page 2)

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On a lighter note, miateredhead ties the conversation back to last week's discussion of spanking, imagining a God who spares the rod:

OK, Sodom and Gomorrah, you are in time-out!

Worshipping that calf again! I told you...give it to me! Now! You may not worship it again for a whole week, and I mean it!

Adam, Daddy understands how tempting that apple was, especially with that mean old serpent egging you on. You won't do that again, will you honey?

OK, I'm going to count to 10, and everybody who's going with Noah had BETTER be on that ark!

There's a lot of good reading and good discussion to be found in Blogging the Bible Fray. Check it out. GA … 10:00pm PST

Friday, Jan. 26, 2007

If the songs of Madonna and Britney Spears affirm the virtues of a good spanking from time to time, the idea of corporal punishment has become decidedly less vogue in the arena of childrearing. The trend towards pacifism found its ultimate expression this past week in a California bill to outlaw spanking by parents altogether. Widely dismissed as an excessive manifestation of the liberal nanny state, the proposed law receives a rare defense from Emily Bazelon.

Many cast a skeptical eye on the supposed link between child behavior and discipline in the first place. "There are so many things going on societally" points out chadosaurus, among them "parents … being lazy, short sighted, concerned more with being best friends than parents, selfish" that it's impossible to cite spanking as "either the problem or the solution." Isonomist- chalks up the escalating rate of juvenile misbehavior and violence to the disintegration of the two-parent household since the 1960s. Taking the interrogation of such a link further, Vepxistqaosani3 laments the general lack of respect shown superiors:

If the argument that spanking is ineffective be true, then it follows that American children should be better behaved today than in the past.

But friends and relatives who teach in the public schools assure me that this is not the case; that children today are far more disrespectful and unruly than ever. Who among us over forty can remember even the most notorious juvenile delinquent mouthing off profanely and obscenely to a teacher? But that is not even unusual today.

unempirical attacks the proposed spanking law as overly broad, and therefore prone to abuse by overzealous prosecutors. wolfmann questions the basic enforceability of yet more statutes aimed at regulating behavior within the home. Inquisitor14 blasts Bazelon's article as "the worst kind of irresponsible indefensible social theory … especially as the author admits that there is not a preponderance of evidence on either side here."

An advocate of the occasional smack to the backside, kjm rails against the underlying ego psychology of modern parenting:

Just follow a badly misbehaving kid thru a store while his mother is busy telling him, "Mommy said for you to stop that," Mommy said for you to be quiet," Mommy said you won't get a candy bar if you don't behave," ad nauseum, and you pray they will pick the kid up and deliver two quick smacks to the backside.
A couple of swats on the hind end thru layers of clothes (the classic definition of spanking) teaches a child that he owes you and others around him respect and good manners and that, as a parent, it is your obligation to see that he learns this valuable lesson so that others will like him.
Letting a child grow up thinking he is the center of the universe, which many unspanked children seem to feel, is a disservice and poor parenting.