(Denver Post photo)
Re: ap poll: “Do you think spanking is an appropriate punishment for children?”
I was appalled to read the results of your opinion poll showing that 70.4 percent of readers think it is acceptable behavior for parents to spank their children in the name of discipline. Are we still in the dark ages? We wonder why our society has so much domestic violence.
It is obvious to me that many children who are hit or spanked become angry and violent toward people. The children do not learn that it is never OK to hit another human being — or animal, for that matter. Until the message that people are not to be hit, spanked or beaten is taken seriously, our problems with violence will continue for generations to come.
Many people say that is the way they were raised, so that makes it acceptable. Let us question that statement. It wasn’t right then and it is not right now. I say that when you know better, you do better. Letap do better and stop hitting our children.
Debbie Healy, Lakewood
This letter was published in the Sept. 20 edition.Re: “Corporal punishment not effective long-term, experts say,” Sept. 15 Features story.
When did the right to be treated with dignity fall to the wayside? Women and children have been in the news recently with the disturbing stories of attempts by others to humiliate and degrade them. Adrian Peterson hitting his 4-year-old child with a stick, Ray Rice punching his fiancée, and U.S. District Court Judge Mark Fuller abusing his wife are all intolerable acts of coercion and power.
While I’m sure there are people who can’t imagine equating disciplining a child with hitting a woman, in each of these circumstances the acts were done out of anger and with a deep misunderstanding — at best — that their power gives them some sort of insulating privilege exempting them from the need to treat women, children and everyone else with dignity.
Hitting other people will never be an effective form of modifying anyone’s behavior. We have a long way to go.
Sarah Davidon, Indian Hills
This letter was published in the Sept. 20 edition.
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