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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (66192)	12/12/1999 1:12:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I didn't know that about Sweden. I knew you couldn't spank there but that rate of decrease in mortality from child abuse is fantastic.

To: Grainne who wrote (66192)	12/12/1999 1:15:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I do not think that they have the right "to hurt their children". I do think that part of the compact of our democracy is to leave people alone in matters like child rearing unless there is a compelling reason to interfere......

To: Grainne who wrote (66192)	12/12/1999 8:44:00 PM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

I agree strongly that spanking should be abandoned. There is no way it can help a <2 yr baby learn. Moreover, their lack of response to a little pat they cannot feel makes the spanker even angrier. "Shaken baby" syndrome is a significant cause of baby death. We have a number of people (especially military) convicted of murder or manslaughter because they killed their babies with seemingly tolerable punishment. The first thing to be done is to establish and demonstrate the dangers of spanking through research and publicity. Those who favor mild or moderate punishment simply make it more difficult to ban abuse. It is a thin line between "correction" and "abuse" and almost any parent can remember approaching or even passing the line. Think of a poor couple, crowded in a tiny space, a whining sick baby, no money or access to an emergency clinic, both of the parents raised accustomed to corporal punishment, the TV clattering in the background, no one too bright or well controlled, .... But another problem is the inadequacy of services for children in most places. Foster parents are too often in it purely for the money. Some of them are very bad people and conceal it pretty well. I was an expert in a Maui case in which two children of a mother were put in foster care. In each of the foster families there was a pedophile. Each of the children was repeatedly raped and after several years became completely uncontrollable. The girl is a prostitute. The boy on the way to becoming a mass murderer (a rich mass murderer, I might add, because he has been awarded 1.5 million dollars by the courts but is free to do as he wishes). I cannot abide the thought of children being taken from dysfunctional families and being put into something much worse. I think we need to fix the families as a whole, instead of breaking them up. If we treat the families as a group, feed and educate them, give them more room to live, we might be able to help the kids. It seems absurd to me that we think we can help the kids by putting them with strangers.