I don't know the circumstances, but a little boy was acting up and his mother spanked him outside the dining room. Well, this was not the place to do that. Within an instant, the mother was surrounded by irate grandmas literally screaming at her. Someone grabbed the child. Someone else called shrilly for social services. And one woman in a nut-brown wig delivered a scathing lecture in which the words "unfit to be a mother" figured prominently.

Now, obviously, watching a child be dealt with with unnecessary harshness is horrible, and seeing the sweetness getting yelled or hit out of a blameless child by an angry parent is one of the most upsetting sights in the world. And when you see that, you understand things like the "spanking ban" that Sweden's had in place for 30 years. There's a really interesting piece on NPR that takes on the issue. It's arguably changed that country's child-rearing culture - but some feel it's overly indulgent. And others simply feel it's nobody's business - and that there's a wide margin between a spank and abuse.

I came from the kind of home where corporal punishment was tantamount to eating fast food - unthinkable! But some of this, I'm sure, was the influence of the times and a deliberate distancing from their parents' generation (at least, on my mom's side.) And yet, plenty of my friends grew up in more traditional setups and don't feel the occasional spank did them any harm. To most of us, there seems to be a wide margin between true abuse and the little boy I babysat whose mother "never wanted him to hear the word 'no' and who has now been kicked out of his school for bad behavior. Now, there are concrete arguments for the legislation: it's been suggested that spanking can be a gateway to more serious abuse, and effect children's cognitive and emotional development. And if either of these things can be prevented in a world where we can't prevent much, obviously, they should.

But in American it's never that simple. The issue is largely cultural, as the Catskills incident shows, and in America, that kind of legislation would have to but up against a myriad of backgrounds and mores. I'm anticipating hearing a wide range of perspectives here, from mothers as well as those of differing backgrounds, and I want to. Because the issue becomes: what is abuse? Is it in the intent? Is it in neglect? And by this logic can harmful indulgence be considered punishable, too? Yes, I'm playing devil's advocate here, but it's an issue that, in its complexity, demands that.

A Spanking Ban In The U.S.? [NPR]
Related: Study: Spanking Worse For Kids Than Yelling

"A Strong Natural Tendency To Escalate": How Mild Spanking Can Lead To Child Abuse

He was standing on the train when he saw this:

A young woman, maybe 18, was standing against the opposite door. She slapped her daughter, who looked to be about 4. I looked away. Then she hit the child again. And again, and again.
(...)
She had a friend with her, perhaps 16. And when the child cried, the friend hit her, too. Five smacks now and counting - from two people.

This was all very public. People were watching them and I was watching the people while also watching the hitting. Someone, please, say something.

Hits 6, 7, 8. Harder.

On a subway full of people, Halperin (a self-described "54-year-old white Jewish guy") was watching a much-younger African-American woman abuse a child, and was hoping that someone, anyone would stop her.

But they didn't. So he did.

"Stop hitting that child!"

Who said that? Stepping toward her, I took a dive off a sky-high cliff - and there was no way back.

"Who are you to tell me not to hit my kid? She's my kid!"

"Don't hit that child again or I will call the police!"

"I will hit my child if I want. I know how to hit my child. Go ahead and call the police!"

Since the confrontation halted the abuse, Halperin ended the confrontation, comforted to see an older, African-American woman start a quieter conversation with the mother.

A woman sitting nearest to the young mother started a quieter conversation with her. I could not hear the entire thing, but it was clear that this woman, in her 50s, was counseling her on how to handle an unruly child without hitting.

"You don't know me," the younger woman said to the older one. "You don't know my child."

Although the woman's posture might have just been public defensiveness and bravado brought on by being corrected by older people in public, it certainly doesn't seem like she knew there was anything wrong with her behavior — but neither Halperin, the woman or the two other dudes who congratulated him for saying something contacted the police.

Most people — those on the street as Liv Tyler drove by (not to mention the paparazzos who took the shots) and those in the subway car with Halperin — don't want to get involved. They don't want to be yelled at, humiliated in public, to confront issues that, too often, fit within stereotyped roles. Halperin expresses discomfort at the racial politics of the situation, but what about the issue of their difference in age? Other questions:. How far do you go to stop a child abuse you're forced to witness in public? And when do you get the cops involved?

Complaint Box | Defending a Child [NY Times]

Related: Liv Tyler Rushes To Help A Troubled Baby! [Celebuzz]

Kazdin writes that corporal punishment usually does stop bad behavior temporarily. Even though it's not an effective deterrent in the long term — kids will misbehave just as much as before — what parents remember is that brief moment when a child quit screaming or cursing or peeling the wallpaper off the wall. And if they don't perceive hitting as a problem, they're unlikely to pay attention to studies that say otherwise.

Repeated corporal punishment is bad for kids' development — they have worse impulse control and poorer health as adults. So should we ban hitting kids (note: the man pictured above is testifying in favor of such a ban)? Kazdin points out that these bans can be effective, both in reducing corporal punishment and in actually improving children's behavior. He also writes that the US is in some ways way behind the rest of the world in children's rights — only the United States and Somalia have yet to ratify the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child. One reason for this is that Americans want to preserve parental authority, including the decision to spank or not to spank. Should this decision be a parent's to make? Or, given the evidence, should we let the U.N. make it for us?

Spare the Rod [Slate]

Earlier: America: Land Of The Free, Home Of The Spank
Researchers: Spanking Can Lead To Sexual Deviancy

Even ol' Orwell's boarding school has likely banned beatings, as "smacking has nearly vanished from schools," in Europe, explains the Economist. But this little detail makes the U.S. look even worse: America is the only country, "along with Somalia, which has failed to ratify a United Nations convention on children's rights, which since 1990 has protected children from “all forms of physical or mental violence."

As the magazine points out, there is a world of difference between a light pat on the butt to prove a point and true child abuse, "and in a world where children face such horrors as forced labour, sex trafficking and military conscription, devoting energy to outlawing parental smacks may strike some people as the wrong emphasis." But still, it's pretty embarrassing for the U.S. to so wholeheartedly support the public humiliation of their children by potential strangers in school. Then again, the beatings did stop wee George Orwell from wetting the bed. "So perhaps this barbarous remedy does work," he noted, "though at a heavy price, I have no doubt." Such, Such Were The Joys, indeed.

Spare The Rod, Say Some [Economist]
Such, Such Were The Joys [George Orwell]