Will parents dare to discipline? (The Last Word).

Thanks to the major media, "monster mother" Madelyne Gorman Toogood is turning out to be a threat to all American children, and not merely to her own four-year-old daughter. The widely broadcasted videotape of Toogood's abuse is being parlayed into a campaign to prohibit -- or at least intimidate parents from employing -- legitimate and loving corporal discipline in the upbringing of their children. "Across America virtually everyone, including Toogood, agrees that she crossed the line," reported the Chicago Tribune on September 25th. "But just where is the line? One swat? Two? Or is any corporal punishment of children over the line?"

The article went on to retail worn-out arguments for banning spanking completely. "As soon as you start using violence to settle something with a child, you're saying violence is the way to go," the Tribune quoted pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton as saying. Brazelton is apparently convinced that children fail to distinguish between a disciplinary swat on the bottom and a pummeling to the head for no apparent reason.

The famous jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked that "even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked." Yes, even a dog can understand that all blows are not alike and that there are sometimes different reasons why discomfort is inflicted. Anti-spanking advocates are really arguing that their children lack a power of distinction possessed by dogs. One might next expect anti-spanking advocates to lecture football players against batting each other on the buttocks after a successful play so as not to be a role model for violence. I wonder if the "no spankers" will subsequently tell us that "time outs" teach children that it is okay to unlawfully imprison people, and that taking away favorite toys as punishment teaches children that stealing is acceptable.

While it is possible to accept that academic pedants and their pacifistic fellow travelers lack the mental capacity to discern the difference between loving discipline and a vindictive beating, children are not so intellectually impoverished. Most children are quite bright, and they easily make these basic distinctions.

"The result of spanking is our children's fear and resentment of us," asserts Murray Straus, the most prominent "researcher" of the anti-spanking movement. Here again the anti-spanking lobby assumes children are intellectual morons, incapable of simple distinctions. The reality is that children spanked for misbehaving will only fear their parents when they misbehave. Should this be controversial? Perhaps Straus believes that children should not be afraid of swearing at their teachers or hitting their little sisters. Perhaps he believes children will grow up resenting their parents for making them afraid of putting their fingers in electrical outlets. Savvy observers of Straus' statement might ask, "How could loving discipline possibly cause lasting resentment in children?"

Straus is ready with a reply. His studies, he says, demonstrate a strong correlation between spanking and psychological trauma-- specifically, depression and suicide. But Straus fails to explain how anti-spanking Scandinavian nations such as Sweden, the first nation to ban spanking, have the highest suicide rates in the industrialized world.

More importantly, Straus' studies -- along with all similar studies on the subject -- are hopelessly flawed by making little or no distinction between simple spanking and severe physical abuse. Most of these studies are additionally self-discrediting by focusing solely on parents who spank teenagers rather than on parents who spank younger children.

My personal experience as a father of three children is that the effectiveness of spanking begins to diminish after age six, and is almost entirely ineffective -- except as an unused and unspoken specter -- by age ten. During the teen years parents possess a whole battery of non-corporal disciplinary measures (such as grounding and denial of privileges) far more effective than corporal punishment. So Straus' academic studies are, simply put, irrelevant to competent parents engaging in loving discipline.

Spanking is most effective for young children, from the age of understanding (between 18 months and three years) to six or seven years of age because young children are always living so fully in the present. Toddlers do not always make the connection between bad behavior now and a "time out" imposed hours later after returning from the mall. A sternly spoken rebuke at the moment the child misbehaves and a little swat on a diapered bottom-- even though the swat is lighter than normal horseplay -- do far more good at that age than the "time out" equivalent of life without parole later.

Excessive publicity over the Toogood beating will diminish the advantage of spanking. Parents otherwise tempted to swat their mischievous children publicly on the behind will now hesitate to do so, fearing intervention from state social service organizations. Tremendous social pressure will cause them to postpone spankings until safely in their homes. And we can expect more out-of-control toddlers in department stores -- unless parents love their children enough to dare to discipline.