I get very uncomfortable when I see people "spank" their kids in public, and I have seen cases where it goes far beyond spanking in my mind-to the point where I wonder what will happen to the child when they get home. Does anyone else? So if it makes people feel like that when it is done in public why is it somehow more acceptable if it is done in private?
By Laurel J. Sweet | Thursday, November 29, 2007 |
http://www.bostonherald.com
After all the jokes, the bitter backlash and the political spin put on a proposal to outlaw spanking, it took one man’s unabashed show-and-tell to unify a State House hearing room in silence yesterday.
“My mother, as a child, was tied to a bed post and beaten, so she in turn beat us that way,” Jerome Frazier, 52, of Dorchester testified matter-of-factly as he pulled from a plastic grocery bag the black leather belt and electrical cord he said he was thrashed with as a boy.
“I was in a gang. I was a terror,” said Frazier, who walked in off the street to offer the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons With Disabilities a piece of his mind.
Rep. Mary Grant, a Beverly Democrat and one of the legislators asked to study what would be this country’s first outright ban on corporal punishment of children, could not hold back her tears.
While she believes “most people are doing just fine by their kids,” Grant said, “we’ve all got to carefully think through” what constitutes acceptable violence in the home.
Kathleen Wolf, the softspoken Arlington nurse who brought the now-national debate to the Legislature’s table, said she doesn’t want to see moms and dads criminally punished for meting out discipline, just educated on alternative methods of parenting.
“We clearly need to specify what implements may not be used,” Wolf testified.
Evelyn Reilly, director of public policy for the Massachusetts Family Institute, urged committee members to do nothing, saying “many” kids “require a measured smack on the behind.”
“This bill is trying to impose a one-size-fits-all encroachment on families,” Reilly said. “You can’t always reason with a child.”
Teresa Whitehurst, a clinical psychologist, mother of two and author of “How Would Jesus Raise Your Child?” said the bill would “prohibit” the wielding of belts, switches, sticks and other paddles on children, where currently no such law exists.
“Spare the rod and guide the child is what I say,” said Whitehurst, who as a kid “was spanked a lot.”
“We’re moving toward being the first nonviolent state in the nation,” Whitehurst said. “Massachusetts is uniquely poised to be a leader in this regard.”
Corporal punishment of children is already illegal in 19 other countries, none of them in North or South America.