That. It seems that “disciplining a child” gets a bit of a pass from society. Corporal punishment is variously accepted in different places. If what Adrian Peterson did to his child was done to an adult, would that fall under any statutes that prohibit that type of behavior among adults?
I don’t think someone gets a pass for causing “open sores” as a result of hitting a child or an adult with a switch, but different cultures have different rules about what constitutes domestic violence and what doesn’t.
Last time I grounded my wife I got thrown in jail for kidnapping.
Exactly. But I’d very much like to call what I do to my wife “disciplining.” Gives me wide latitude!
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If striking one’s wife with an open hand and leaving a red mark is considered “domestic violence”, I’d think striking one’s wife with a branch and leaving bleeding wounds would be in “aggravated assault” or “felonious assault” territory.
In some states that is already domestic violence and the Police are obligated to arrest, not just the man, but the woman is she was violent herself (and vice versa). As for physically disciplining a child, whether it comes under domestic/family violence at all varies by state.
You are not allowed to leave open sores on your child, and FWIW, you could get into trouble for that a pretty long time ago, long before there was a debate about open-handed, non-mark-leaving spanking.
If you want evidence that people several generations ago objected to using children as punching bags, see a movie from 1919 called Broken Blossoms.
The term “child abuse” goes back to a 1962 article in JAMA, but the first conviction for “child cruelty” was in 1874.
Using the treatment of adults as a guideline for treating children is wrong-headed. In fact, doing so is what lead a lot of people to object to women breastfeeding babies in public, as though it were equivalent to having an adult touching another naked, in public. If we had to treat children and adults absolutely equally, we’d have to enfranchise children. It might be that a lot of six-year-olds wouldn’t choose a president for worse reasons than many adults do, but I don’t think children’s suffrage is a good cause.
Children and adults are different. For that matter, parents have a particular relationship with their children that allows them to be able to do things other people can’t do. I can send my son to his room, or ground him. No one else (well, his father) is allowed to confine him, other than someone I might temporarily authorize to do that.
I think CC knows the answer to the question quite well, and is pointing out the disconnect in allowing physical harm to children that we would never allow to adults.
A lot of people would disagree with you here, or there wouldn’t be so many people backing Peterson’s right to “discipline his child”.
TY
Kid had marks on his SCROTUM, I can’t believe anyone anywhere is defending the right to hit your kid on their scrotum.
No. The only things not permitted are eye-gouging and kicks to the face.
Are rhetorical questions a subset of General Questions?
They would be wrong, because it’s still against the law, and has been for a long time. People are free to argue that something illegal should be legal, and if that is what they are doing, good luck, but beating your child to the point of leaving open sores is and has been against the law.
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The OP is making a point instead of asking a real question. As such, I don’t see a factual question to be addressed here. The OP expresses an opinion that might encourage some debate on the topic, but I’m not seeing enough of a debate here to move the thread to GD. Since the thread is mostly an expression of opinions, let’s try IMHO instead. Depending on how the thread progresses it may end up elsewhere.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
I recall years ago some people in Oregon were trying to pass a law making it legal to do whatever you wanted to your kid to “discipline” them as long as it didn’t do “permanent damage”; in other words, electrical shocks or broken bones would have been fine. There most certainly are quite a few people who would have no problem with smacking their kid in the testicles. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” and so on.
I have only a vague idea about this case (and I’m very much OK with that). But, while what this guy did sounds utterly horrible, the reason it’s wrong isn’t ‘because any behaviour that wouldn’t be acceptable towards an adult isn’t acceptable towards a child’.
It isn’t acceptable to confine an adult to a space he or she wants to get out of - in fact, it’s a crime - but I’m still gonna send my kids to the thinking corner when I think it’s appropriate. It isn’t acceptable for one adult to decide everything that another adult eats, wears, reads and watches and every place the other adult goes - it would be sinister and abusive - but I’ve got no problem deciding all that stuff for my one-year-old and much of it for the five-year-old.
The reason it isn’t acceptable to physically harm a child isn’t ‘Would you treat an adult that way AHAHA GOTCHA!!!’ It’s because it isn’t OK to physically harm a child.
Violence is violence, and it is defined by intent, not the physically discernible external wounds. Those wounds have only judicially evidentiary relevance, and do not define the fact of violent intent.