On slashdot I said that one of the prerequisites to forcing parents to take responsibility for their children is to provide them with more protection when they have to discipline their children. If you have to spank your child because they are out of line, that should not be child abuse because it is an act of correcting discipline, not undeserved force. However, a randroid disagreed with me, thinking that it is much better to just allow parents to toss their unruly kids out onto the streets:
Forget the "child abuse" label. Hitting someone is assault, whether the person you're hitting is an adult or a child, and regardless of whether the child is yours or someone else's. It should be treated as such.
On the other hand, the parents should have some leverage as well. I propose that they not be legally obligated to provide shelter or care; any child that habitually breaks the rules can find its own food and shelter. To protect against overuse, relax the rules giving preferential treatment to biological parents in regards to custody and let others take in the child voluntarily with a minimum of trouble. Then the problem cases can discover first-hand the consequences of alienating their caretakers, and uncaring parents can learn to treat their children as human beings instead of personal property. This should cultivate a much larger degree of respect on both sides.
Nevermind the fact that a small child is going to process this as a traumatic event, not in the sort of rational cause-and-effect manner that this randroid assumes. The reason that children are naturally subordinate wards of their parents is because they are immature and incapable of the sort of behavior that this randroid expects of them. In fact, a true mental ability to fully grasp cause-and-effect on a mostly adult level does not, on average, develop until around the time that they hit their teenage years.
Who wants to bet that this randroid has, on at least one occasion, seriously argued to someone that any individual should be able to buy a missile launcher under the aegis of the second amendment?
Randroid?
As in, Rand?
Forget the "child abuse" label. Hitting someone is assault, whether the person you're hitting is an adult or a child, and regardless of whether the child is yours or someone else's.
Oh please. There are exceptions to assault: self-defense, defense of another, necessity. Spanking should just be one more.
Yep. This definition is pretty good.
Ahhh but you see this is, for the randroid, a perfect backdrop to try to drop in their idea that parents should be able to abandon their kids when they're fed up with them.