Child Abuse Is Not Funny

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Wow!

That must’ve been an awful thing to find out. You have my sympathy.

That’s true, which is why we need laws in place to prevent cruel behavior.

Laws do not prevent cruel behavior; people do.  Laws only prescribe what can and cannot be considered 'legal', and what penalties may be applied for breaking those laws.

People rely too much on laws to prevent what only people can control -- their own actions.

Laws can keep people from engaging in illegal practices because they don’t want to go to jail, especially if they lack the empathy to keep them from engaging in the activity in the first place.

Child abuse is an example of cruel behavior that needs to be policed by appropriate laws.

It would be nice if people didn’t engage in that behavior, but it’s harder and takes longer to change a culture than a law. Laws can lead to cultural changes.

[sarcasm]

Uh-huh ... and the jails are overflowing with people who never engaged in illegal practices...

[/sarcasm]

Yeah, but it keeps some from engaging in them.

It also allows child protective services to remove children from bad situations.

We could try to implement what other countries have done in this regard. We could see what’s working for them and what isn’t.

Thank you, it's been a long time and I've made a good life for myself You seem to have put behind you a pretty cruel past too... We and many others broke the cycle and that's already a big deal.

But I care a lot about the subject of this thread, because I've found since then that there are many other forms of abuse aside from downright endangering someone's life (like the deliberate cruelty you describe in your OP), more subtle and insidious but equally dangerous since they can scar or even cripple someones inner being to the point of no return. Not to mention create a new generation of bullies and... victims.



This - while the laws themselves are not enough, along with other factors they do help changing mentalities. Not so long ago, people would look the other way if someone hit their wife in public or viciously kicked a cat or dog minding their own business. These days, not so much (at least in what we like to consider "civilised" places, after all, it's been a while since even wife-beating is supposed to be done in private *sarcasm*).

Around here, most 20-30-year-olds would react just as strongly to seeing a child hit or mistreated as they would if they saw an innocent and harmless animal kicked. The irony does not escape me, but I'm glad to see progress.

Better understanding child (and brain) development, along with the associated behaviours is already a great step, along with giving these issues some real consideration, instead of "inheriting" one's views on parenting, doing what "everybody else is doing" or blindly replicating parental models we grew up with and understanding that our children are neither copies of ourselves, nor objects meant to please, obey us and succeed where we failed.

^^^

I think another thing to keep in mind is: what would the majority of child development psychologists and experts recommend in this regard?

Would they be for corporal punishment or against it?

Why do some people think that they know better than the experts?


As far as pushing for cultural change goes, normal parents are not going to want to have their children taken away, so if a law that abolishes corporal punishment makes that a possibility, they are going to try to change even if they disapprove of that law from a cultural standpoint. In a couple of generations, the family will probably have adjusted and will disapprove of corporal punishment.

Obviously, this scenario is looking at typical parents who care about their children. This would not happen with sociopathic parents.

Thinking in terms of racial prejudice in America, first we had to abolish slavery and then enact various other laws regarding employment, the vote, eliminating segregation, and punishing hate crimes to finally get where we are today (not that we’ve attained an enlightened ideal yet...).

Cultural change regarding human rights is gradual and usually requires baby steps in the form of new laws and amendments to current laws.

At least in my country, you have to be careful with drastic law changes.
Families are secretive and distrustful towards the state anyway and intimidating children not to tell anyone "or dad will go to prison and it will be your fault" is a vision real enough to me.

Being a survivor of subtle forms of psychological abuse, I don't think making them illegal would help any bit. A lot of the abuse was about maintaining an elaborate facade of a perfect family and if the law got interested in it, the need for such a facade would be even stronger. To get families to open about their issues, you need quite a lot of tolerance for things wrong there.

What helped in my case was just naming what happened to me and learning boundaries.

As a mandated reporter, I’m on the lookout for suspicious bruises, unusual behavior on the part of kids, and potential red flags that could make abuse more likely.

I think that facades work but only to a certain point and not in every situation. When teachers find something suspicious, they report it.

Stricter laws would protect more children. If there aren’t any, people will argue that abusing children is their right and that it isn’t wrong.

If you mention visible bruises, we're likely talking about different stuations.
Law can help to some extent but beyond some threshold, making it more strict results in less respect for law, not less of the original problem.
It's like speed limit. To some extent, it can increase safety but limiting cars to walking speed would cause far more problems than profits.
It's likely you're living in an area where the metaphorical speed limits are largely nonexistent, so making some would be likely reasonable. I live in an area where both metaphorical and real speed limits are much lower than most people practice so I can see how making law more restrictive can backfire.

Last edited by magz on 02 Jan 2020, 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wasn’t just referring to visible bruises although that is a relatively easy thing to look out for.

I notice child abuse is also joked about in the media.

The Simpsons where Homer is choking Bart.

South Park where Butters is always getting grounded and his parents mentally abusing him and Shelly beating her younger brother.

I am sure there have been others too.

I have seen people joke online how their moms used to beat their asses and my dad has joked about wanting to spank my kids and my husband has joked to our children "I like spanking nudie butts, I see your nudie butt, I am going to spank it because I love spoanking nudie butts" as a way to get them to get some clothes on.

And also don't forget birthday spankings.



And it's not illegal to hit your kids in the US if you are not psychically harming them. No bruises, no cuts, no burns or other marks and no injuries, not abuse.

Yeah, that's a problem. Most adults will be able to understand that even if something is done in fiction, it might still not be okay in real life, but children won't necessarily get that unless someone teaches them. If they're already abused at home and see abuse in other families, even if they're fictional, they're likelier to think of it as normal and unlikelier to try to get help.

I think that some children's shows could actually have episodes with mild child abuse and the abusers getting punished for it to teach kids that sometimes those things happen and that they're not okay and that it's possible to get help.

I don't EVEN want to think about how people you just triggered with this post!

Personally, even though I understand some things you mentioned are really just playful and in good fun and not exactly inappropriate, I always found those kinds of things to be disturbing. There's nothing wrong with parents being physical with their children. I think that's important. But I promised myself I'd never repeat those mistakes with my own kids. My oldest absolutely despises being touched. So I leave him alone. My girl wishes I'd tickle her MORE. Kids are just different. Touching that's corrective or nurturing is always ok. Play-touching that kids tell you they don't like? Even if it's non-sexual, I still count that as abuse. That's a personal boundary of mine and I don't intend to tell other parents what they can/can't do. As a child myself, I understood if I was being a brat or out of line I should be punished. I could just take my licks and move on with life. That's basically what I told my children, and they understood what was happening and why. What absolutely crushed me about going through this as a child was it seemed like my dad salivated at the opportunity to beat me over something. I don't think it should be an off-limits method. I do, however, believe if someone can't control their anger or if they have any doubts as to whether they can use corporal punishment without causing physical harm, it might be best that they find other effective methods of discipline.

Corporal punishment at my school is a BIG no-no. What happens at home, however, is not my business. If I have discipline problems in my classroom, I just pick up my phone and make the parents aware of what's happening at school. And the child returns to me the next day and we speak of it no more. SO FAR this year I haven't written a single disciplinary referral, which is a record for me. I'm hoping I can make it to the end of the school year without one! But I did work at schools where it was allowed, and admins even told me I'd have better behavior if I hung a paddle over my desk. I never did, though, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable going there with someone else's children. I'm of the belief that's really the parents' job. Even when everyone understood corporal punishment was a regular component of school policy, parents would still file lawsuits.

The most shocking thing I ever witnessed was when I wrote up a student for misbehavior and her father showed up. This guy was not nearly as lax as I am. The girl was normally well-behaved, and I wrote her up because I ALWAYS write people up when they cross the line, whether they chronically misbehave or not. I lacked a lot of flexibility and finesse back in those days, so I'd write 'em up, turn 'em in, and forget about it. So this father called the office and asked when my planning period was (unbeknownst to me) and I got called in for a conference. Well, I just told my side of the story, the student confirmed it, and the father thanked me and the admin for doing a good job. The father asked if he could "take care of it" and then asked the admin to leave. I started to exit the room and he said, "No, I want you to stay so you can see this." Now THAT was not easy. But it taught me a lesson--that I needed a much thicker skin if I intended to keep teaching. Twilight probably would have reported that guy, but he did nothing legally wrong. At that particular school it was just another day.

I have come to the conclusion that there's nothing technically wrong with corporal punishment for middle and high school. I just don't think it's effective past a certain age. For me, 8 years is the cutoff. Beyond that, the second best way to correct anyone is by attacking their values. If a problem is directly related to excessive cell phone use, take away the cell phone. If they don't do required chores or won't study because of video games, take away video games. An assault on values always gets positive results.

The single best method is through reason. However, reason as a form of correction makes a grand assumption about the person being reasoned with: that the person who is corrected is reasonable himself.

I noticed that some objections to physical punishment are related to fear. The problem with that is fear is initially a rational response. It is rational to want to preserve life and avoid pain. Consequences that invite pain and death are best avoided, according to the rational mind. Violence is irrational when it is initiated, but rational as an equivalent response to wrongdoing. A rational child would quickly associate misbehavior with pain, and out of a rational fear response avoid circumstances that result in pain as a consequence. At this point, the child has grown past the point of compliance out of fear and has begun acting within reason. A child should never say, "We don't do that because we'll get a spanking." The child should say, "We don't do that because it's immoral." As their capability for reason matures, they can begin exploring why they OUGHT to have been corrected, regardless of how they were corrected, and extend that reason to other moral issues. As adults, we understand certain values might be worth suffering for. Children should be made aware that this happens, but protected from having to knowingly make decisions that would put them in harm's way. If children must continuously be ruled by fear and not reason, the result will be bitterness and resentment. If a child feels he has nothing to lose, don't be surprised when he hits back--or worse.