If signed into law, parents would be prohibited from forcefully laying a hand on any child under age 18 unless it was to wrest them from danger, lest they be charged with abuse or neglect.
Rep. Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat, submitted the 61-year-old Wolf’s petition at her request, but is not taking a position for or against corporal punishment.
“He does recognize and understand the concern many would have on legislating parental rights,” said Sean Fitzgerald, Kaufman’s chief of staff, “but the problem is the boundary is often overstepped. The right to hit should never be the right to hurt.”
Charles Enloe, 45, of Plymouth, knows a little something about that. In 2005, he was infamously arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon for taking a belt to his then 12-year-old son during an argument over homework.
The charges were later dropped and Enloe told the Herald yesterday the experience “didn’t change my views at all. I believe discipline starts at home. Are they going to start legislating that you can’t raise your voice to your kids? That you can’t tell them when to go to bed? We’ll be communists then.”
The state Supreme Judicial Court agreed in principle when it ruled in 1999 that parents can spank their kids provided they don’t threaten bodily injury.
Corporal punishment in the home is already illegal in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and the Ukraine.
In 1979, Sweden became the first country in the world to ban spanking. Anders Erickson, spokesman for the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, D.C., said in the 1960s 53 percent of Swedes backed corporal punishment of children. By the 1990s, that number was less than 10 percent.
“There are other ways and means to bring up children than to beat them,” Erickson said. “Much better ways.”
An ombudsman is available to children in Sweden to report allegations of corporal punishment. Parents face jail time if it’s found they’ve stepped out of line.
ping
Well, they have outlawed crime, and that has worked pretty well for them...
Yes, byt Kathleen Wolf knows what’s best for all of us. Her opinion is what counts. My bet is she’ll be running for office soon enough, ‘specially if this goes down the bowl.
Asinine doesn’t begin to do justice to this article.
This is a frightening reality check at how far we have descended from the “home of the brave and the land of the free”. This is the worst form of nanny stateism whose unintended consequences will be nothing short of tyranny by children holding their parents at bay with threats of reporting them to the police for spanking them. I shudder at the thought and can’t help but wonder how many parents will end their part of the tyranny by abdicating their role as parents and turning their progeny completely over to the state?
I can’t help but imagine that Ayn Rand is lying in her grave screaming “I tried to warn you!” How could she know that we would become so deaf??
Massachusetts ....
Need we say more? Oh yeah, Mitt Romney.
There are enough child abuse laws on the books already without taking away effective parenting tools like a swat on the butt. Some behavior needs immediate negative consequences.
Kathleen Wolf is just one more person trying further erode the importance of family. It’s part of an all out effort to deamonize parents and further separate them from their children. After all “it’s for the children”. Let’s make criminals out of the parents for spanking and let the pedophiles skate free. The twisted liberal logic can be mind-numbing.
Howie Carr should have a ball with this one this afternoon.
Parenting ping.
Giving the state the right to take children from loving parents.
Charles Enloe, 45, of Plymouth, knows a little something about that. In 2005, he was infamously arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon for taking a belt to his then 12-year-old son during an argument over homework.
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Damn, I’d be in jail. I have a special belt for my kids. Once they reach a certain age (12) the hand on the hiney is useless...
Actually grounding works real good, but sometimes a wakeup call is needed.