Stay The Hell Out of My Crucial Life Decisions - Spanking ed.

The Canadian Medical Association Jounral has come out and said that spanking should be banned. Editor-in-Chief, John Fletcher is calling on the goverment to remove the protection for parents who use reasonable force to discipline their kids (read the G&M article if you want the wording of the law or read the whole thing here).
This is the problem when health experts try to influence the law and politics.  They are so blind to their religion of science that they can't see its flaws.  I am not one to go around calling science a religion.  True science has nothing to do with religion.  But, when you have well-meaning people jump all over shoddy scientific studies to advocate criminalizing normal parental behaviour.

Listen to the study that is being held up as evidence.

Harsh physical punishment such as pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping or hitting was associated with increased odds of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and several personality disorders. Researchers found 2 percent to 7 percent of mental disorders were attributable to harsh physical punishment
 

Ok, pushing, grabbing shoving, slapping are not the same as spanking. This earlier G&M article doesn't even mention these details.

It's hard to let these experts realize that it's a whore they are sleeping with.  They have real feelings for her and they obviously aren't the ones paying, so you just have to shout at them:  SCIENCE IS A WHORE!

Dr. Fletcher says he’s not advocating for the criminalization of the occasional poor parenting choice. “If the aim is to improve parenting,” he writes, “then calling the police is the wrong approach.”

Instead, he’s hoping to shift the focus to how ineffective spanking actually is.

 Just what does he think he's doing?  Obviously he is a medical expert, so he is not too knowledgable about the law (neither am I), but when you criminalize a behaviour, you are calling for the troups (police, CPA) to move in.  The point of the law, is not to protect child abusers. It is to protect parents -who are human and make mistakes and have to deal with real day-to-day issues in the best way they can - who might otherwise have their lives destroyed by the system that has a monopoly on legal violence. The whole unintended consequences argument is totally lost.  I'm not saying that spanking is always necessary - it should probably be used perhaps 1-2 times for most children (in the entire time it takes to raise them).  But allowing the government into the homes of parents should only be done as a last resort in cases of serious abuse.  This do-gooder (mostly leftist) notion to let no single act of harm go unpunished is deeply disturbing.  Do they really blindly believe in the holy grail of government so much that they can't see that the loss of freedom and the potential for severe punishment of minor transgressions is far more harmful than a parent spanking their child once too often?
I truly believe that the love between parents and children can overcome the pain from overuse of spanking (not abuse) and we are better off letting the love heal the wounds rather than some over reaching government agency.

Marketing Newspeak in Everyday Conversations: Playpen or Play Yard

I recently had a conversation with some friends that went basically like this:

Friend: "My baby is outgrowing the bassinet. I think it's time to put him in a crib."
Culdesachero: "I guess he's growing."
F:"Yeah, it's a lot sooner than with our first. We didn't move her until she was X months old."
C: "Oh really, interesting."
F:"Of course, with her we didn't move her directly into the crib."
C: "Where did you move her?"
F:"Well, she moved to the play yard first."
C: "You had her sleeping, like, on the floor?"
F: (Slightly indignant) "No, of course not. It was in the play yard."
C: "I'm sorry, what do you mean by play yard?"
F:"It's a square thing you put the kid in so they don't get hurt. But this has extra sleeping and change table attachments."
C: "Oh, so it sounds just like the playpen we had for ours."
F:"Yeah, but they're also called play yards."
"Sorry, when I think of a play yard, I think of those little fences with gates where you just go in." making little gate-swinging motion.
F:"No. A play yard has a floor..."
C: "I guess a couple of years makes a big difference in the language."
F: Scoffs.
C: "It's still called a playpen. No matter what the marketing geniuses try to rebrand their product as. It sounds like they're just trying to separate the idea that you're penning your child in there like a dog."
F: "huh? That's just what they call it."
C: Cheekily, "It's CALLED a playpen. You don't have to invent new words. The word already exists."
F: "Well, at least you're open minded about it."
C: Laughing, "That's me, Mr. Open-minded."


Inside, I was facepalming like mad. If I hadn't deflected the conversation in a lighthearted, self-deprecating, "I'm-so-stuck-in-my-ways" manner to let everyone know that I understand that it's not really a big deal, this could have gotten pretty heated. Still, the point was made, although, I'm sure some participants and observers are of the opinion that I'm just a jerk.

Child exercising in "The Yard"

Do I take life too seriously? It amazes me how people accept corporate re-branding and renaming things that have existed for centuries with so little thought. Am I the only one bothered by this? Three years ago, nobody would have equated the terms playpen and play yard. Now, because my friends either read about play yards somewhere in some corporate-sponsored articles or talked to a slick saleperson who insisted on calling them play yards instead of playpens, they've completely erased the term playpen with this newspeak term play yard at the behest of marketing executives. (Yes, I really think about these things.)
I've never looked at one of these things and said, "Wow, look at that yard for babies to play in". I've never met a baby who liked to play in one regardless of the term used to describe it, but that's besides the point. The definition of yard means basically, a tract of ground next to, surrounding, or surrounded by a building or buildings, ofen enclosed. Whereas, a pen is defined as a fenced enclosure for keeping animals. This does not mean that pens have floors, but the definition of yard specifically mentions the word ground. So, pen may or may not have a floor, while a yard can not have a floor (other than the ground). Therefore, play yard is an incorrect term for a device with a floor designed to safely, temporarily confine and hopefully entertain small children while mom and dad are busy, but within earshot. But, you say, this is for indoors. Ah, I guess I'll give you that, but if you were to extend the definition of yard to an enlosed indoor area, the floor of the room would become proxy for the ground in that case, meaning you can call an enclosed area of floor could rightly be called a pen or a yard, a playpen that keeps the child off of the floor could not be called a yard.

Wikipedia currently has the following definition:

A playpen is a piece of furniture in which an infant or young toddler (typically those less than 35" tall and 30 lbs) is placed to prevent self-harm when her/his parent or guardian is occupied or away. The earliest use of the word "playpen" cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1902. More recently they have also been called "playards".

Recently(?) they have also been called playards????  Try, recently, a marketers have tried to remove the negative connotations of penning children like pigs, replacing it with the notion that they can be let "out" into the "yard" as if for fresh air.  I'm sure Lenore Skenazy could have some spin on this.  I mean, parents are being reported to police for letting their children play unattended in their own back yards.  Could this be the "yard" of the future?


I can picture the smarmy salesman speaking to the soon-to-be parent:
Mom-to-be: "But, I would never confine my child in a pen like a pig or a dog!"
Smarmy Salesman: "Of course not, madam, that's why you should consider our newest line of play YARDS for your precious ones. They'll enjoy the yard while you do their laundry or heat up their Kraft Dinner."
Mom-to-be: "Oh, well if you put it that way."

Makers of playpens have always had to deal with the notions of these insensible people who can't decipher between keeping an animal in a pen and confining your child to a safe place for short periods of time while you take care of important personal and household matters. The term pen always holds these connotations and, in the mind of marketers, prevents sales from reaching their full potential. So, they've invented a new word and are doing their best to wipe the old, more accurate, term off the face of the earth. When I google playpen, I get over 6,000,000 hits and images are fairly uniformly of playpens. "Play Yard" in quotes gets just under 3,000,000 and images vary widely between playpens and outside yards suitable for play. What we are witnessing is a corporate sponsored shifting point between these two terms. Nobody is much bothered by it except people like me who actually feel meaning behind words is important and who resist new expressions that loose accuracy. Granted, PLAYpen is using the word "play" fairly liberally, since all most kids do in them is scream to be let out.

Since the PC cleansing of our language that replaced such horrible terms as fireman, manhole cover and retarded with more inclusive or pleasant sounding firefighter, maintenance hole cover and developmentally delayed, we have become primed for such language adjustments. Strangely, it bothers me less that fireman has been changed to firefighter because at least the term does not conflict with its meaning. I'll still say fireman or firefighter interchangeably, but, I will not say play yard for a child containment device that has a raised floor.

Such conflicting terms have always bothered me, even before I finally completed Orwell's 1984 and learned more about the purpose and origin of Newspeak. It bothers me regardless of the motivations (power, money, goodwill). But, what truly disturbs me, is the ease with which the new words are accepted by people. I have this alarm in my brain that goes off whenever I see or hear something that conflicts with my previously held truths. If you tell me that something is blue and opaque and it is obvious to me that it is clear and yellow, my internal-conflic alarm will go off and I'll be forced to call you on your misconception. You cannot then say to me, "Let's agree to compromise and meet half-way. Perhaps it is green and transluscent." There is no perhaps about it. I can see that it is yellow and I can see through it clearly. There is no discussion. Your assessment is incorrect. As Winston Smith said, 2 + 2 = 4.

Liberal war on Childhood Aggression

I just have time for a quick post about a G&M article equating aggression with behavioural problems.  I don't know if liberal media  and research community make this mistake on purpose in order to further the anti-bullying agenda or whether they just don't understand that aggression is a natural behaviour, whereas, behaviour problems are the result of poor social conditioning.

Aggression is a useful trait for sports, business and social circles if channelled and trained properly.  If a child is taught proper self-discipline and empathy, aggressiveness will help him or her succeed in the world.

The NYU study, which seems problematic because it is based on parental reports and observation - how much and what type of observation is not stated - really points to socialization by parents.  Of course parents who have difficulty socializing with their children will have children with difficulty socializing in school.  Acting out, defiance and hostility are the result of poor social skills and self-control.  These are learned behaviours. 

There are countless ways that an aggressive nature can be expressed.  This is shown by the lack of correlation between infant temperament and difficulties in Kindergarten and Grade One.  With proper parenting, the children with aggressive temperaments quickly adapted to the school environment and showed no behavioural problems.  Poor parenting resulted in problems no matter what the temperament was.

Confirmation bias is astounding amongst Blank Slate believers is astounding.  The scientific method cannot filter it out of sociological studies.

Onestdv, The Breastfeeding Consultant.

So Onestdv is out chasing yet another conspiracy.  This time he says that infant formula is part of the plot to undermine the family.

Infant formula is simply another example of a technology enabling the women's movement, not the other way around. Before infant formula, mothers who couldn't breastfeed had to find willing mothers to lend their milk or pay for a wet nurse. Big business, as always, filled the gap and continues to gather huge profits (egad).



The point One fails to mention is that in the heydays of science (50's -60's), the prevailing notion was that science had surpassed nature and that there was no way that nature could provide the kind of nutrient-filled food that the powers of science had cooked up. Then, we discovered that the mother's immunity was passed to the child. Of course, this small, but important difference was blown way out of proportion. Suddenly, the pendulum swung and baby formula was painted as an evil corporate plot and everyone said that nothing MEN invented could be as nourishing as a woman's all-natural milk. The science-whore was used to link breastfeeding to higher IQ and link formula to obesity. I suspect it’s more a function of income level since lower income people are less likely to breastfeed.


Women are now shamed for letting a single drop of formula touch their child's digestive system. Go to a maternity ward and witness the bleeding and cracked nipples and weeping mothers ashamed that they can’t get it right refusing to believe that they should taint their babies with that poison.

ONE has it backwards. The breastfeeding craze is perpetuated by the leftist Gaaia worshipping feminists. Like other religions that cause suffering, it is propogated by the piety of other sufferers (usually women). The same way that Muslim women don the veil to tell other women that god hates them; mothers pass guilt trips for even thinking about using formula along with a whole host of other overblown fears and parenting misteps.

In regard to the US government funding:  It appears as though even the WIC is moving toward milk banks as an alternative to formula.  This move would suggest that the government is moving away from the somewhat counterproductive practice of funding formula for anyone on the plan.