Moms and spanking? Examine the link. Community/moms? And this is published on Father's day?
And the lead sentence suggests the author has been asking only MEN why they spank their children. Why do men spank.... in the community/mom's section? On Father's day? Then he aludes to the fact that if you do spank, someone can get your name and call social services and then the parent could lose their children to gestapo-style state workers who will label you a violent savage and steal your children. THAT PART IS TRUE. And should've been followed up on, but alas, was not. As for spanking, if you don't give your kids at least a few light taps (and most likely ONLY a few) to get their attention when they are deliberately ignoring you as a moody 3 and 4 year-old, then you're going to be brandishing fists with them at the age of 13 - that is from my grandfather, age 90, 1 of 10 children, father of 3 and grandfather to 6. He has successfully forecasted such events in my extended family for going on 4 decades.
http://www.boston.com/community/moms/articles/2012/06/17/what_if_spanking_works/
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What if spanking works?
Studies show that most parents don’t want to hit their kids — and that some 90 percent do it anyway. Why even the most modern moms and dads can’t stop asking themselves the most controversial question in parenting.
| (Henrik Sorensen/getty images) |
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for me to realize that asking a man why he spanks his children is like asking him when he stopped beating his wife.
A
few moments later, she called back to apologize. “I’m at work — that is
not a conversation to have around other people,” she hoarsely
whispered. “I know you say a mutual friend told you to call me. But for
all I know, you could be Social Services or something.” She insisted
that I not call her again.
Things
continued more or less like that with more than a dozen other
people — uncomfortable silences, hang-ups, an astounding number of
variations on “Thanks, but no, thanks” — until I reached Kevin Cargill, a
35-year-old real estate professional in Boston.
“I
can’t lie, my wife and I do spank our daughters, and I’m not ashamed of
it,” Cargill tells me with a nervous chuckle. He says spanking has
sometimes been the only way to get through to his girls, who are now 12
and 13. “But at the same time, I can’t say that around everyone. It’s a
serious thing, man. And there are people out there who’ll think you’re a
beast if you admit to spanking.”
Countless
debates at the edges of playgrounds may roil over how much screen time
is too much and the right age to stop breast-feeding, but there’s no
more radioactive topic in parenting today than corporal punishment. This
despite the fact that it was almost universally accepted just a
generation ago. These days, a mother in a mall parking lot who merely
raises a hand above her youngster’s backside — the disciplinary
equivalent of a poker player’s bluff — is sure to generate dirty looks
and tsk-tsking from complete strangers. And if she dares follow through
on the threat, she stands to lose friends and the respect of her
colleagues and may even find herself the target of a state
investigation.
Spanking your
kids isn’t illegal in Massachusetts, or anywhere else in the United
States, but that mother’s worry that I was an investigator was no idle
concern. This was a lesson Don Cobble, former pastor of a Woburn church,
learned the hard way.
In
1997, Cobble was investigated by the Massachusetts Department of Social
Services over allegations that his discipline of his 9-year-old son had
veered into abuse — a fine line made finer by the fact that Cobble used
the strap of his leather belt. Two years later, the state’s highest
court cleared Cobble’s name, but the damage to his reputation was long
done. “Ours was not a huge community, so news spreads and friends
quickly became former friends,” he says. “I guess what bothered me most
was how many people turned on me, as though I was less than human after
they found out.”Continued...
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