Hitting close to home

Remember the blog project I did in 2010 with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, Moma Rock picked the topic: What are your thoughts on this article?

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

If you haven't read the article in the topic section, it's basically about Canada's top medical journal calling for a nationwide ban on spanking, citing it is bad for childrens' mental health.

While I understand where they're coming from, I want to know how such a ban is implemented and the measures they will take to make sure it is enforced. Will there be video monitors in every room of every home containing a child? Or will all children have sensors implanted in their bottoms so that they go off when smacked? Relying on word-of-mouth isn't always effective. Some children might feel too embarrassed, ashamed or scared to say anything at all, worrying about the overall effects it could have on their family if they told. Other kids might be mad because their parents didn't let them go out partying and lie about being spanked to get revenge. I just can't really hold much faith in a law that tries to prevent what goes on in one's private residence. It's not like driving drunk, where you have a chance of getting caught.

Then there's the factor of what brought on the spanking. Did the child deliberately do something bad enough to potentially warrant it, such as starting a mini-house fire, running out in traffic, severely injuring a sibling, etc? Or was the parent having a bad day and one innocent request from the child set them off? And if it's a non-witnessed event and becomes "he said, she said," who's to know the truth of what brought it on?

While I understand the implications for a child's mental health, maybe authorities should be focusing more on actual child abuse situations vs. discipline. There are parents that just hit their kids for the sake of hitting them, or do even worse, such as not feeding their children or stubbing cigarettes on their skin. Then there are loving parents who become so upset over a child doing something dangerous that their immediate reaction is to spank, even though they feel horrible about having done so.

I think this ban (or law, as I like to call it) has a lot of gray area that needs to be explored and tight parameters that need to be set before it can really have the effect it wants to. At the end of the article, it talks about extending the ban to the United States. If that were the case, Canada would really need to prove it was working before trying to send it our way. I don't think many people would buy into it otherwise, no matter how much previous research was behind it.