The Southwest Airlines Mom and How Our Society Condones Child Abuse

I'll admit that I get riled up pretty easily - but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, makes me more crazy than parents hitting their children in the name of discipline.  A story broke yesterday that has got me going.  A mother on a Southwest Airlines flight slapped her 13 month old child in the face and on the legs because she couldn't get the child to stop screaming.  Passengers complained, a heroic flight attendant intervened, and the child was taken from the mother for the remainder of the flight.  Ugh.  So sad, so maddening.

What really makes my blood boil, though, is that the police in the case let the mother go merrily on her way.  No arrest.  No jail.  Nothing.  I am outraged that our legal system and our society permit - no, condone - physical violence towards children, as long as that violence doesn't go "too far."

We've learned from this case that in our great nation, it's not "too far" to publicly slap your child in the face, speak to the child in a demeaning fashion ("Shut up" and "I didn't hit you that hard,"), and to "pop" said child whenever she won't stop screaming and kicking.  It's not even "too far" when said child was already sporting a black eye from an alleged dog bite.

There is an insane double standard at work in our country, as evidenced here.  If this mother had engaged in the very same behavior on the very same flight towards any other person on that plane (including someone else's child), the mother would have been hauled off in handcuffs and booked on assault charges.  Yet because she hit her own daughter, the behavior was a-okay.

Bang head on wall. 

The bottom line - our society values "parental rights" and privacy rights over the sanctity and safety of our children.  The only way to explain the insane double standard is that our society believes children are of less value than adults.  Since they are less than us, parents can do to children what they want, within reason.

It's tragic.  It's barbaric.  And it's blatantly wrong.

Listen up: The only difference between a child and an adult is the size of the body.  Children have the same minds, the same hearts, the same souls, the same fears, the same desire for love and respect and autonomy as adults.  If we are EVER to move ahead as a race, we have got to realize this.  They are not our property.  We do not own them.  We are their guardians, and that is it.

Spanking, "popping," slapping, shaming, all inflict harm on a child - physical and mental.  And if a parent is doing it, then he or she is not a guardian, but an abuser.

To the woman on the Southwest Airlines flight, to any parent that can not get between their anger/frustration and their raised palm or fist, I say this: Get your shit together.  Stop justifying your behavior as permissible because you're a parent, or because God or your church said it it okay, or because it was done to you and you're okay.  Get some therapy.  And learn how to control your freaking emotions.

Photo courtesy of VMJones, istockphoto.com