Corporeal punishment (a/k/a “a good whupping”) was once the rule in child rearing, but our society has since become enlightened, with advocates for children deciding for parents everywhere how they may deal with youthful indiscretions.  Just ask any enlightened child advocate, and they will be happy to tell you why they know better.

Two stories this week, however, show that some variations remain in this age-old American tradition.  One comes via Walter Olson, with the other from David Giacalone.  Both add up to the confusion we face as parents seek to deal with their wayward kiddies in the face of modern philosophies.

From the Chicago Sun-Times,

[A]6-year-old boy had gotten five write-ups for bad behavior during the summer program. A phone call was made to his mother, and his aunt picked him up.

The aunt asked Schandelmeier-Bartels “where the bathroom was.”

When she returned to where she left the boy and his aunt, Schandelmeier-Bartels said she heard “Whack” “Ow” “Whack” “Ow” “Whack” “Ow” several times, according to the suit. She reported what she considered abuse to the state and the police.

It seems that summer program director Cathleen Schandelmeier-Bartels was unaware that such a whupping was a “black thing,” and was unfamiliar with the concept of a “bathroom whupping.”  She was fired for her racial insensitivity, sued and recovered $200,000 for her wrongful termination.  But was she right to report this to the police?

When it comes to abuse, Schandelmeier-Bartels is probably more sensitive than most. She has worked with the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and in 1996, she coordinated a video for the organization that got global attention. “I don’t believe in ever spanking or hitting a child no matter what,” she told me. “If someone else other than me had been outside that bathroom that day, I doubt that the incident would have been reported.”

The critical point is that she doesn’t believe “in ever spanking or hitting a child no matter what.”  Since that’s what she believes, it must be criminal to do so. 

But this story from Schenectady breaks through stereotypes, with a white father administering a whupping of his own.

Police say Fisher committed felony assault on March 13. He whipped his son with a belt after the 13-year-old was kicked out of school for stealing from teachers, hitting other children and cutting a girl’s hair.

But supporters of corporal punishment say that the few short-lived welts on the boy’s butt might be just what he needed.

His father, however, now faces jail time if found guilty. He plans to take the case to trial to argue that a one-time belt-spanking for inexcusable behavior is well within a parent’s authority.

“I was just trying to be a parent,” Fisher said. “He’s 13 now. I’m trying to raise him to be a man. I couldn’t just sit back and watch him going down the wrong road.”

And Lloyd Ray Fisher now faces felony assault charges.  Or, a medal for being an exemplary parent, according to who you talk to.

At the extreme ends, the question of parents administering a good whupping seems fairly easy to resolve, even though the most zealous advocates would argue that any spanking is an assault and child abuse.  But where should the line be drawn?  If the parents play a role in a child’s bad, even criminal, behavior, what exactly do we expect them to do about it?  Fisher tried the alternatives first.  They didn’t help.

“I’d tried the Dr. Phil method. You sit him down, you talk, you go out for ice cream, you go on long walks,” Fisher said. “But he was in continuous trouble. It’s like an everyday, regular thing: The judge said stay out of trouble for a month, and six hours later he stole again. He was hitting girls — I sat him down and said, ‘Dude, that’s the most disrespectful thing you can do.’ The last thing you want is your kid beating up girls. I have little girls and I can imagine — that’s as low as you can go. And he kept doing it.”

We’re happy to blame parents for doing a lousy job, but we’re also happy to prosecute them for trying to fulfill their responsibility of raising law-abiding children.  While the true-believers, for whom no corporeal punishment is acceptable, offer a bright line test, most people, black and white, rich and poor, still believe that parents have some role to play in the rearing of their children.

What is not at all clear is how to develop a rule for parents to understand where the line is drawn between good and responsible parenting and child abuse.  Do we want to leave it up to the nearest Schandelmeier-Bartels, making the determination of whether one happens to have a zealot close at hand to call the cops any time a parent behaves in a way in which she disapproves?  But then, we are also aware of many instances of serious child abuse by parents, resulting in death and disability of children that leaves us asking how this could happen without anyone intervening.

Where is the line?  Both parents and children deserve to know.