It's not child abuse unless it's, well, abusive. A few pops on the butt is often what it takes, it seems. I was spanked unmercifully...too much. I didn't spank or hit my children, but I didn't need that kind of discipline. They were sweet, calm, obedient, little stepford children. There were some of their friends who I wanted to get a hold of myself sometime. Twice, during sleepover parties, I called parents to come pick up their daughters.
This post was edited by Thriftymaid at October 26, 2019 11:56 AM MDT
Immediately after birth is a strong qualification. There's no reason a liberal would choose these actions (at any time) unless the infant was born with a serious deformity that prevented the child from living a normal, healthy life.
What you call chemical castration could only refer to a child born intersex because there's no circumstance in which a liberal would castrate a normal infant or child. 1 in 60 babies are born with an abnormality in their genitals which makes their gender unclear. The parents are faced with a decision whether to accept the abnormality and how to deal with it. Some parents decide which sex to raise their child as; others treat the child as both and let the child decide at puberty. Some decide to give hormone treatments to help the child develop into a specific gender. Liberals are likely to be in favour of choice - meaning they want hormone treatments to be a legal option in such cases.
No parent would surgically mutilate a baby, nor would any surgeon agree to such an operation. Rather, if a child was born with a deformity, any sane parent would authorize the series of operations needed to help the child grow up as normally abled as possible. I've heard of doctors and parents making the decision to allow extremely deformed babies to die naturally simply by not intervening to rescue them - and I believe it's quite common, though not often spoken about. Here, religion would have an influence on the parents' choices - but that alone doesn't predict the decision. Some devout parents would do nothing and allow the death because they believe it's God's will and the innocent will be in a better place in heaven. I doubt that politics would influence the choice. Many liberals do favour euthanasia to end certain and unbearable pain and suffering. I am one such. I could not bear to see a child born with a painful and incurable condition suffer until it died naturally. There are some kinds of pain (5%) for which there is no drug capable of easing the pain. One choice would be to put the child into an induced coma until he or she died - and in the absence of legal euthanasia, some parents choose this option. Yet I would choose euthanasia over coma since unconsciousness means no quality of life. I acknowledge that it is an especially difficult issue - which is exactly why I think all parents should have the right to choose according to their values.
Murdering an infant after birth or up 'til around two years old was common in most ancient cultures. The patriarch in the Old Testament had the right of life and death over his animals, children, wives and slaves. Mothers in hunter-gatherer cultures frequently abandoned their infants if there was a drought, hence no food and her milk dried up. So I think it's unjust to try to portray Democrats as would-be murderers.
I think it's worth noting that no liberal seeks to impose hormone treatments, corrective surgery or euthanasia on any family's child against the family's will. The whole point of liberalism is choice. Those whose beliefs prevent them from such actions remain free to choose to live exactly as they see fit. Conservatives" morals and ways of life are not threatened simply because the law permits a choice in certain situations.
If conservatives assert the right to practice their faith, why do they feel the need to impose their moral values on others?
Spanking has long been proven by psychologists to be child abuse - but this statement needs qualification. A single slap on the bum for a pre-verbal toddler does no harm if used to prevent danger or harm. For instance, to stop an older sibling from harming a younger one, or to stop a child before it burns itself via on a hot iron, boiling water, fireplace, etc - - the situation demands speed and the child is too young to understand or to instantly obey the command "no".
Corporal punishment causes long-lasting emotional harm and it's very difficult to cure. There are thousands of studies in different categories. Some collate the results of individual cases from therapy, others come from questionnaires of very large numbers of people, while others are longitudinal, following individuals from birth to forty years old and beyond. Others are comparative cultural studies, showing how different practices work en mass. The results show that corporal punishment is the least effective way to produce a well-adjusted, empathic and functional adult. In fact, corporal punishment is more likely to result in adults who are callous, cruel, violent and sadistic. The more severe and frequent the punishment the worse the results in adulthood. These studies don't mean that no child should experience negative consequences for bad behaviour. It only means that physical punishments are not effective because they teach the wrong lessons. Talking about the behaviour in the right way (not shaming) does work. It's as simple as that, even with teenagers. The key is learning the right way. There are plenty of alternative ways to effectively guide a child, and they're available in every bookshop and library, and freely accessible on the Net.
This post was edited by inky at October 26, 2019 3:56 PM MDT
