"Cose che non stanno ne' in cielo ne' in terra"

[fpb]

Isn’t it amazing how many supposed adults do not seem to have ever been children? It is particularly sad when these same persons pretend to legislate for those of us who have been, are, or will be

Comments

[prylliepwns]

I personally live in California, and as the mother of 2 children, I both agree and disagree with this law. It states that no child under the age of 3 shall suffer corporal punishment.

I admit to swatting my son's behind before he turned three, and I've continued to swat it even now that he's 4, but I see the reasoning behind this law. It's designed to protect the smallest of children, the ones for whom spanking is mostly useless and not always called for.

There are entirely too many wacko's in this world that would confuse spanking with beating, and can seriously injure a child under 3. The anterior fontanel, the "soft spot" at the top of a baby's head can take up to 3 years to close, though it's closed by 24 months in 96% of children. This law is designed to protect children from those parents who take spanking entirely too far.

That being said, I don't agree with the law. I don't believe that it's the government's job to parent the child, and it is most definitely a breach of authority on the part of the state. It is not the state's job to set legal precedent for when and how a parent may discipline their child. So I guess the point of this long winded comment is that I agree with you.

[fpb]

There are laws against child-beating and violence. At least, I imagine there are in California - there certainly are in every country in Europe. And for that matter, I regard the use of extreme violence against children as the most debased of crimes - I hope I have said it clearly enough early in the article. What bothered me about this legislative tendency is something that I see as increasingly prevalent in certain areas of our world - the tendency to see everything as violence, and to see no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate force.