Spank me!!!

There are days when I am simply ashamed to be a liberal. I’ve been following Barbara White Stack’s “Juvenile Court Journal” in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for some time now, and I’ve even expressed enough outrage at the semantics of the child welfare system to send a letter to the editor.

Today’s installment, A little lie tears a girl from her dad, reminds me why I absolutely abhor the child welfare system in the United States.

When I worked at the county office of child welfare shenanigans in the mid-1990s, I remember that spanking was just emerging as a hot point. Granted, the rule is that foster parents may never spank or otherwise physically discipline the child, and biological parents are held to the same standard during supervised visits with their children. I won’t say that I absolutely agree with this rule, but for the sake of the child, who has had enough drama in his/her life (including a string of court appearances), I can understand that a swat on the ass is probably not the best thing for the kid, especially not under the watchful eye of the judge or the caseworker.

The problem with the child welfare system (well, one of many) is that good parents are punished for occassionally smacking a kid on the behind as a form of punishment, yet parents who neglect their children or mentally abuse them run free. Why? Because corporal punishment is easier to identify, even if it’s a tap on the arm with a flyswatter, because physical contact was made at least once. Mental anguish is harder to prove in a courtroom, although in juvy court, most evidence admitted is circumstantial anyway.

I could pitch a thousand bitches about all the bad parents I’ve encountered in my day when that was my career path. One story: we used to give out Xmas gifts for all the kids every year, and oftentimes, parents would pick up the gifts and turn around and sell them DOWN THE STREET FROM OUR OFFICES for drug money or for drugs themselves. I shit you not. When I saw dealers carrying around my beautifully wrapped Barbie dolls or my teddy bears with ribbons around their necks, I nearly cried. Those children for whom we TRIED to provide a little bit of Christmas, well, they would have none because Mommy needed a fix.

And I don’t know if it’s the P-G reporter or what, but she always follows families who seem like they shouldnot be involved with The System. Yet they are. The little girl in today’s story didn’t want to go home from school one day because she’d gotten in a fight, so she told the principal that her daddy would beat her with a pipe if he found out about it. So, she was whisked off to Children’s Hospital and dropped into foster care. The reason? Daddy might have beaten her. That, and he was belligerent when he found out she was going into foster care. That must mean that he’s an abusive father, right?

Argh. If I had a child ripped away from me, you’d better damn well believe that I’d be pissed. And while I know it’s necessary to remain composed and respectful — to show the judge what a super-duper parent you are — it’s ridiculous to expect a parent to pretend that they’re thrilled to miss work and to appear in court because their child has been yanked out of their lives.

And as far as spanking, how therapists and counselors and child welfare advocates insist that talking to your child should be your course of action instead, well, :::pffftttt::::. Yes, I blew a raspberry at them. Had I not been spanked on occasion, I’d probably not be alive today. Because I was just one of those kids who was into everything. I wasn’t bad, just nosey. I had to touch the hot stove, to see if glass could bounce, to decide to take a walk outdoors by myself when I was only 3 years old. I didn’t hear it when my family told me that, gee, it’s not a good idea to do any of those things. But damn it, when I got my hand or my ass spanked, I got the message instantly that I was lucky that that was ALL I was getting. 🙂 And I stayed away from stoves and glass and other outdoor adventures, because, well, I didn’t want to get spanked again.

For a majority of the kids who are in The System, well, perhaps a quick whack on the butt wouldn’t kill them sometimes. I mean, how many have seen how Daddy got the track marks on his arm? How many saw Mommy ripping the hair out of her sister’s head, in a drunken rage? When Junior starts wreaking his own havoc, in the spirit of his birthparents, wouldn’t it be in the public’s best interest to show him that he simply cannot act like a dum-dum head just because that’s the way he was brought up?

In the days of paddles and switches, there were fewer discipline problems, and the reason for that, well, see above where I said I didn’t want to get spanked again. All of my teachers had paddles displayed in their classrooms when I was a young lass in the late 1970s/early 1980s. And they had holes in the paddles, too, which, as legend had it, made the hit hurt that much worse. So, of course, we were less inclined to act out-of-line, as we didn’t want to have, um, rosy cheeks. 🙂 That, and like we used to say, “My parents would kill me!” if we got spanked at school.

It’s just a shame how today, if you exclaim, “My parents would kill me!”, that they would immediately get carted off to jail and your ass would be swooped up by Social Services faster than a crackhead snorts a line. Back when I was growing up, and certainly before that, such a statement meant that your parents cared about you and that you were a little bit afraid of them. This, my friends, was a good thing. It kept me — and millions of others — from fucking up a lot more than we did. And we all turned out pretty damn OK, as far as I’m concerned. So, you see, fearing your parents a bit — even when they were as sweet and mild as my mom — wasn’t a bad thing. They taught us to think before we did something bad, because we would have to face consequences. Before the age of computers, we were altogether TOO familiar with “if-then” loops. IF you fuck up, THEN Mom will smack your ass and throw you for a LOOP next time you want to do something stupid. 🙂

The world may be advancing by leaps and bounds, but sometimes, you’ve got to look to your past in order to lay a foundation for the future. But that’s just my humble opinion.

And for what it’s worth, I still love a lil swat on the ass. 🙂 Although not coming from Mom. ROFL!!!

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