filed under: fathers be good to your daughters

The viral video of Texas Judge William Adams beating his 16-year old daughter shows parental behavior that is reprehensible (link).  There is nothing that can justify such behavior.  The fact that this man will likely not be prosecuted due to a statute of limitations (link) should not preclude him from losing his position on the bench.  He sits in judgment of child abuse cases.  How can a man who so clearly is willing to let his temper loose and terrorize his own family make judgments about the actions of others?  We should not hold our public servants and officials to a higher standard than the law requires, but we can at least expect them to obey the laws that they enforce on the people.  Anyone who would rationalize his behavior (and from the comments, there are plenty who would) is simply wrong-headed.

Like so many in my generation, I grew up with the belt.  Like some parents, I have given the occasional swat on the behind to my own children with my hand.  But never in anger and not for years.  It has simply been uncessary. In this one video, this man doles out more than my children have experienced in their entire lives, combined. But they have had a swat or two on the rarest of occasions.  I admit to this here merely to indicate that I don't want to be a hypocrite and suggest there should be a total abstention from any particular form of "disciplining."  As with the use of weapons in war, when dealing with other nations, we should have everything on the table, if only so that we do not have to use everything.

This impulse to beat a child comes from a bliblical view that revolves around the notion that when you spare the rod you spoil the child.  An eye for an eye and all of that.  While I am not entirely opposed to the use of force in circumstances where it is warranted, it is high time we put away our medieval notions of public justice and family rearing and realize that an example of good behavior is far more effective than a threat to punish bad.  Train up a child in the way that he should go?  You don't get there by first telling the child that if she doesn't listen to you and obey your commandments, you will "hit her in the fucking face" with a belt. And you don't let men who make such threats sit in judgments of our laws and ourselves. Whether it be policemen spraying pepper spray in the faces of protestors or politicians sitting on tax committees who do not pay their taxes... or judges sending people to jail for beating children when they themselves do the same... we should not accept this in a civil society.  Fathers be good to your daughters... people who live in glass house shouldn't throw stones... there's a reason those things resonate.