So----some have wondered what happened to the essay. Obviously I took it down, after many on a thread discussion at a particular Catholic discussion forum were highly critical of how cruel it all seemed. Well, maybe the overall tone was a little excessive. On the other hand, I take great exception to how people characterize "spanking with a belt" as "beating little children with belts," as if what I have in mind is to "beat" a kid black and blue from head to toe. How ludicrous. That's obviously abuse. What I do also find ludicrous is how many parents get hauled into court and their kids taken into CPS custody because they spanked their kid with a belt in a way that happened to leave a few marks. I find it interesting that in almost all instances that you see, the parent is absolved of wrongdoing, because it indeed was much ado about nothing. All you have to do is go to Google News on any given day and type in the terms "belt" and "spanking" (or related terms such as whipping and the like), and see how many news reports come up in which this happens. Meanwhile, as courts and CPS get tied up in all this, they probably do have less time and resources to investigate and respond to real instances of physical abuse where a child all too often dies.
Now, as for the Bible verses cited, and the original Greek, Hebrew and Latin used to describe the manner and the effect (ie, "impact") of a so-called spanking (or whipping, if you prefer), any truly unbiased reader looking into this could easily draw the same conclusion that I did that a "spanking" was regarded at least once upon a time and for that matter until just a few short decades ago as a very serious matter involving more than some mere hand spanks. Like I mentioned in one of the essays, I was also startled to discover the severity that was implied.
As for parents that prefer not to spank, and for which other disciplinary measures are employed that have the effect of chastising and instructing----more power to you, as long as they actually work, and your kids stop acting like wild, untamed animals at malls, restaurants or in airplanes. But don't be judgmental of those that do spank, and please, by all means do not be so judgmental as to feel compelled to call the police on parents that believe that Old Skool discipline and instruction where Mr. Belt, in all his fearful "splendor," should be one of the teachers---the teacher known for handing out tough assignments that take a few days to complete but ones which you always learn from, remember and grow from. You are impugning a lot of very good people, and this type of near-criminalization needs to stop.
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He who spoils his son will have wounds to bandage and will quake inwardly. A colt untamed turns out stubborn; a son left to himself grows up unruly. Pamper your child and he will be a terror for you Sirach 30:7-9 |
Need I remind people of all the kids of all ages that have essentially become true terrors in the way they act out? All too often you see some truly stressed parent trying to "reason" with them with words or with time out. The parents who were kicked off a plane early in 2007 because their child was being a "terror" complained that they weren't given enough time to calm ("tame"?) the child. For some reason I highly suspect that their idea of dealing with the situation involved some drawn out attempt at talking with the child and "reasoning" with her. A few swats to the behind may have saved them a lot of time and even more embarassment in the long run (they would not have been kicked off the plane). Kids approaching the age of reason (2-3 years old) can be terrors, but so can older kids, and adolescent boys in particular can end up like wild animals if left to themselves and with no discipline early on. Is it at all possible that maybe Sirach meant precisely what the various Greek, Latin, and Hebrew translations imply: A father who loves his son will whip him soundly? Or how about
Sirach 30:12 that is even more graphic (and no matter how "disturbing" this may be to our modern, "enlightened" thinking)? If a kid, is going to insist on acting like a wild animal, then maybe he should be made to understand that he can either chose the easy way or the hard way: Act like a civilized, mature, and intelligent human being, or be treated like an animal that only understands "the whip" (ie, a spanking, however a parent chooses to administer it).I will say what I did at the beginning of the now-deleted article, namely, that "spankings":should as a general rule occur only for the following offenses, as it for the most part was for me and my sister when growing up:
The following in italics is an excerpt from a commentary by Youth Radio's Brandon McFarland.
http://www.youthradio.org/relationships/npr0507_fatherson.shtml
Now when I’m at the mall with my mom, and we see kids going nuts, we say, "That’s a shame. Their parents should do something." I mean, you ever watch these kids? You could make a movie called "When Toddlers Attack!" They throw fits, kicking and screaming for no reason. It might seem a bit sadistic, but if we see a little black kid running around and yelling, we follow them, and just wait for the mom to snatch them up and spank them. The flip side is those white mothers who try to hold a conversation with their semi-lunatic child – it just seems like a waste of breath and time.
To us, if your mom didn’t bother to whoop you, it showed she didn’t care. I knew a lot of moms who were too consumed with their own lives to take the time for discipline, and their kids ran the streets. But
Stay Out of this----This isn't Your Kid
For all those busy-body types always trying to establish a "nanny state" (which is basically a "kinder, gentler" version of a police state) through all means available, the above quote is for you. Now, we come to the recent (2007) effort to ban spanking in California. The full-scale ban proposal didn't work, and the proposal was scaled down to ban the use of any implement. Once again, this is an assault on the right of the family, and hence the right of the child to receive effective instruction from their first teachers (the parents), and for the parents to choose whatever reasonable instructional tools they see fit in implementing the "curriculum."
My mother was divorced when I was three years old, and when I was 5 years old she married an NCO in the US Army who subsequently (a little over two years later after he returned from his tour in Vietnam) adopted my sister (older by 2 1/2 years) and me. My dad, sister and I always laugh about (and respect and love) how my mom would carry out "enforcement" at the spot of the "crime." Being a boy and slightly younger, I was the usual recipient to require such enforcement. A few months after my parents were married and we were happily ensconced at the Army post (Fitzimons Army Hospital), we were shopping in Aurora at a Woolcos, and I was acting up. My mom gave me what Melinda Ruley in 2001 calls the "Wal-Mart Special."
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A15896
Even then (1966), there were some busy-body types, and on this evening a late-middle-aged lady chastised my mom for spanking me (the quick-and simple hand spank to the bare legs, which of course was quite common since the shorts were almost obscenely short in earlier times). While I was in the tearful and embarrassed "recovery mode," my mother shot back "Stay out of this----This isn't your kid."
I wasn't old enough (or pain-free enough at the time) to appreciate why the lady was on the wrong side of the issue. Nevertheless, on behalf of all those parents who spank (however the "spanking" is administered), and to all those that attempt to criminalize them, I say
Stay out of this----This isn't your kid.