Spanking Your Child: The World Disagrees

@RHRealitycheck

Opinion pieces for and against corporal punishment of children cycle around with tremendous regularity. Most are based on absolutely no data, and merely offer some variation on the theme of “I was (or I wasn’t) spanked as a child, and look how well I turned out.”

Many articles inexplicably extrapolate from these hyper-personal narratives to conclude not only that “what’s good enough for me is good enough for my children,” but moreover that whatever the other camp is proposing (to spank or not to spank) is inherently bad for the child with no reference to statistics or science. Most recently, a proponent of spanking argued that not to spank your child teaches her or him that “if life isn’t fair, then throw a fit and you’ll eventually get your way.”

Full disclosure: my parents did not hit or spank me and I have never thought it necessary, desirable, or expedient to hit or spank my child. I know for a fact that she is absolutely clear that throwing a fit won’t get her anywhere. And I also know for a fact that these personal experiences cannot be translated into a theory of child psychology for larger gain.

Instead, let me try to overcome some of the dearth of information on this topic, from the perspective of desired objectives and actual outcomes.

First of all, it might come as a surprise for readers in the United States that many countries have outlawed all forms of corporal punishment of children, including spanking, slapping, other forms of hitting, as well as kicking and shaking. Countries with full bans on corporal punishment include Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, as well as Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, South Sudan, and Ukraine. (For a full list, see here).

Sweden was the first country to pass a ban on corporal punishment in 1979, and quite aside from impressive child health and education indicators, it is clear that the country has not descended into anarchy as a result of this “lack of discipline.” It is noteworthy that Sweden’s standard of living has been described by economists as “enviable,” fuelled by a “skilled labor force” (including a substantial number of workers born after the absolute spanking ban). Moreover, the economic downturn that is engulfing all of Europe is projected to be relatively short-lived in Sweden. In other words: either it pays off to be throwing fits, or else the ban on spanking does not really produce lazy, fit-throwing adults after all.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that there is any direct causal link between bans on corporal punishment and a country’s economy. I am, however, suggesting that hitting children (whatever you choose to call it) is not something most people agree with. And not because I wasn’t spanked myself. Rather, every single country in the world except for the United States and Somalia, have agreed that spanking is wrong, at least in principle, through ratifying the universal treaty on children’s human rights, the Convention on the Rights of Child. (South Sudan also has not ratified this treaty, but banned corporal punishment of children in 2011).  

In other words, the vast majority of the world’s seven billion individuals live in countries that have, in principle, signed and ratified commitments to end violence against children in all its form, including corporal punishment in the home.

To be sure, the fact that governments from all over the world have come together to declare that spanking must stop is not going to convince those who believe in spanking as an effective method of discipline that, in fact, it is not. 

To this there is only one thing to say: they are wrong. 

It is a generally accepted notion that positive reinforcement brings about more lasting behavioral change than punishment both when it comes to animals and when it comes to people. A recent article in The Atlantic notes that theories on how to modify behavior through positive reinforcement form the backbone of successful programs such as Weight Watchers and AA, and provide the underlying structure of newer behavior modification applications for smart phones and computers. 

Indeed, observing children around me, it seems likely that what might produce “lazy fit-throwing” adults is not lack of corporal punishment but rather lack of clarity with regard to what constitutes acceptable behaviour in the first place. There are any number of ways to communicate this clarity, and violence—including spanking—is not one of them. Consistent quality education at home and at school would be a better place to start. 

Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland: A Warning to Women

@RHRealityCheck

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court held that states cannot be sued for denying workers sick leave. An employee of the Maryland state courts, Daniel Coleman, had sued for monetary damages after he was fired for requesting time off to take care of his health.

States generally cannot be sued for damages, but one exception is in cases that involve unconstitutional treatment, including discrimination. While the case decided on Tuesday therefore was framed in terms of state sovereignty, the Court’s very understanding of discrimination was at stake.

The majority opinion handing down last Tuesday should be a warning to women: the Supreme Court most definitely does not have our backs.

Here’s how.

US federal law protects the right to sick and family leave (unpaid leave either to take care of yourself or of a family member such as a spouse, an elderly parent or a newborn child) through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

In 2003, in the context of family leave-related discrimination against a state employee of Nevada, William Hibbs, the Supreme Court detailed the congressional intention behind the FMLA as predominantly a desire to overcome gender-based discrimination. Indeed, the 2003 ruling was very clear: “The FMLA aims to protect the right to be free from gender-based discrimination in the workplace.”

At the time, the Court held that employees of the state of Nevada were entitled to seek monetary damages for infringements of the family leave part of the FMLA. The Court felt that absent such due process guarantee, government officials would somehow lose their constitutional right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex. The final opinion was narrowly focused on the family leave provisions of the law because those were the provisions at stake in the case at hand, but prior to last week’s case, it seemed reasonable to apply the court’s conclusions in the 2003 case to the FMLA as a whole.

Last week’s ruling limits that precedent by concluding that the U.S. Congress didn’t have gender-based discrimination in mind when it enacted the sick leave protections of the FMLA.

The court’s analysis is based on technical considerations of what evidence Congress had before it when it enacted the FMLA—“Congress made no findings, and received no specific testimony” that women might face discrimination for taking more sick leave than men.

But the result is a decision that essentially says that sick leave—taking care of oneself—is fundamentally different from family leave—taking care of someone else—in that it does not depend on gender differences or stereotypes. This is an erroneous conclusion.

Had the Court argued that men and women take equal amounts of long-term sick leave—which is true—the majority opinion in last week’s Coleman case would at least only have been a selective reading of the facts, not a retrograde interpretation of discrimination laws. However, the Court argued that even though the denial of sick leave might have a disproportionate impact on women, denying anyone the protection of such leave still does not constitute discrimination. Such a conclusion flies in the face of international human rights law and even US legal definitions of disparate impact as discrimination.

It is ironic that this sentence was handed down the same week new research on health insurance was published, showing that women still pay more than men for the same health plan. Private insurers justify the price differential by reference to the fact that, all other things being equal, women need more medical care than men, notably due to our ability to bear children and recommended routine health visits related to our reproductive organs.

Of course, PAP smears and prenatal check-ups do not automatically translate into time off or sick leave, though as most of us know, they generally do. The Court majority opinion glosses over this fact by noting that most states have other protections that allow women time off to take care of their health. Again the Court majority inexplicably insists that the denial of a right that disproportionately affects women qua women is not discrimination, all the while reaffirming the fact that the differential impact is real.

None of the three female justices of the Supreme Court held with the majority. Justices Ginsberg, Kagan, and Sotomayor were joined by Justice Breyer to resoundingly disagree with the majority opinion in Tuesday’s ruling in the Coleman case. These four Justices rightly noted that “[i]t would make scant sense to provide job-protected leave for a woman to care for a newborn, but not for her recovery from delivery, a miscarriage, or the birth of a stillborn baby."

Indeed, it makes no sense as a matter of effective policy or legitimate legal analysis.

It does, however, make the same warped sense as the many recent state initiatives to simultaneously curb access to contraception, abortion, and child benefits. The message last week’s majority opinion for the Supreme Court seems to send is that women matter only as incubators and care-givers and not as equal citizens in a modern democracy.

When It Comes to Eating Disorders, Do We as a Society Know What We're Dealing With?

@RHRealityCheck

This week it is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Not that you’d know it. Three days in, Angelina Jolie’s leg at the Oscars on Sunday is still getting a lot more attention than the eating disorder usually associated with unnaturally thin and awkwardly poky limbs.

There’s a reason for that. Eating disorders make for an uncomfortable conversation topic. For one, they are incredibly insidious and prevalent. About 8 million individuals living in the United States have an eating disorder (7 million of them women and girls), and most never get the treatment they need. Essentially, this means everyone knows at least one person with a mental illness. Most people don’t like to think about that.

And then there’s the fact that eating disorders are deadly. Literally. Eating disorders are the mental illness with the highest mortality rate in the United States, and it is estimated that some 20 percent of those suffering from anorexia will die prematurely.

But mostly, many of us don’t like to talk about eating disorders because we’ve been very close to a sufferer.

In my case, me.

When I was 16, I arrived in the United States as a foreign exchange student from Denmark with a complicated, but manageable, case of bulimia, weighing approximately 110 pounds. I went home a year later with full-blown anorexia, weighing about 80 (which, considering my height, indicates a Body Mass Index of about 9.5, i.e. very underweight). It took fifteen years, 3 bouts of therapy, and a pregnancy to finally root out all obsessive thinking about food.

Now, when I think about food, it’s not obsessive. I may really want a cinnamon roll or crave salt. And I definitely get so hungry that thoughts of food take over until I eat. But I no longer think about the quantities I have eaten, or about whether or not I deserve food.

To say that this is “liberating” is beside the point. On the one hand, it feels like I am finally alive, that I can now concentrate on the real colors and textures of life. On the other, to be honest, it’s so basic that it’s mundane. When I don’t think about my past, I forget I ever obsessed over food. I eat when I am hungry and don’t when I am not. It seems uncomplicated, somehow. Yet, of course, I know it’s not.

There are any number of books and articles linking eating disorders to the depiction of boyishly (and unnaturally) thin women in fashion, movies, and television. In my experience, fashion has very little to do with it. Fashion will make perfectly well-proportioned and healthy women and girls want to lose five pounds, go on fad diets, and be miserable. Fashion dictates clothing that looks better on a stick-insect than on a person.

Fashion alone, however, does not make you live off half an apple a day. Fashion does not make you develop so much scar tissue in your throat that your gag reflex is inhibited and you need to use toothbrushes and pens to make yourself throw up. Fashion may be an impetus to lose weight. But it’s something else that makes you stop eating altogether.

And that something else is control. At least in my case.

I am not a reductionist, and years of working closely with victims of all kinds has taught me that while we all are experts on our own suffering, we can be woefully blind to the solutions that are necessary to deal with that of others.

Even so, I believe letting go of control is key to recovery for many. When my mother instituted a system of rewards for pounds gained with target body weight on certain dates, I’d carefully gain the required weight on the required date, then proceed to lose it all and more in the days after. In short, I never let go of control.

By contrast, when I returned to therapy briefly while dealing with a bout of bulimia during a particularly stressful time in my life, my therapist told me not to worry about it. “In the grand scheme of things,” he said, “you are just sticking a finger down your throat. Really, is that so bad? Just remember to brush your teeth.” My purging immediately got less frequent and then disappeared—it didn’t feel so imperative after I stopped worrying about it. In short, I gave myself license to let go.

The point is not that a cavalier attitude always generates the desired change. In this case, my therapist knew from previous interactions who I was and what my reaction was likely to be.

The point is that the perfection those suffering from eating disorders are longing for in themselves in most cases is neither physical nor real. It’s not that I wanted to be thin, or even that I liked my emaciated body. It’s that I was scared out of my wits of failing.

We will need to overcome our societal inability to see errors for what they are—an opportunity to learn—if we want to deal with eating disorders. So if you want to do something to counter eating disorders this week, sure, eat healthily and don’t assume that anyone who’s not a size 2 is unhealthy, stupid, or both.

But more than that: show through your actions that you appreciate effort and honest errors more than caution and control. It may seem three steps removed from eating disorders and food. Trust me, it is not.

Why the Use of Steve Jobs As An Anti-Choice Political Stunt Is Flawed

@RHRealitycheck

Steve Jobs' premature death has generated much online activity, some seeking to exploit his demise for political gain. In this category are articles suggesting that Jobs' status as an adoptee is a reason to restrict abortion access in general. The arguments put forward in this regard are flawed on two levels.

First, no individual circumstances can change the overarching reality that women and girls have abortions when they need them, regardless of the legal context. Restricting abortion access does not make the practice scarce, it merely makes it unsafe.

More than 30 percent of women in the United States will have at least one abortion before they are 45 years old, even though many live in states with few or no abortion providers. Most women who have abortions already have one child or more, and many refer to their desire to have time to parent as a key reason for needing an abortion. 

In fact, in my experience interviewing women around the world about pregnancy and child-bearing, abortion is the end rather than the beginning of their decision-making processes. Women talk to me about food for their children, time to play and concern with paying for their children's education. They talk about expensive birth control and child care and about limited health care options. They talk about how difficult it is to decide when and if to become a mother. And they talk about abortion as an option where other options have failed. 

They rarely, if ever, refer to the legality or availability of abortion services as a decision-making factor.  If a woman or girl feels she needs to terminate her pregnancy, she will find a way. I once spoke to a girl who had fired a gun into her abdomen because she felt too young to be a mother and abortion was illegal in her country.

It is also noticeable that abortion, in the United States, is more and more the recourse of women without financial resources.  In 2008, more than 40 percent of those having abortions in the United States were living under the poverty level, and this proportion is growing.  There is a reason for that: children are expensive and the United States provides few legal protections for parents. There is no federal law to protect paid parental leave or sick days, and there are no allowances for time off to breast feed. Federal law guarantees 3 months of unpaid extended sick leave to be used as parental leave, and only for those who are eligible, which excludes about 40 percent of American workers. There are no general provisions for health care--not even, in most states, for children. In 2010, almost 10 percent of all children (15 percent of children living in poverty) in the United States had no health insurance.

In short, though access to abortion services is becoming more expensive in the United States mainly because service providers are farther away, some women and girls see abortion as the only viable choice available to them.  In cases where women or girls might initially be inclined to carry a pregnancy to term and give the infant up for adoption, many would not be able to pay for prenatal care and to give birth--or even get time off for visits to the doctor and for the birth itself.  This in addition to the many very valid--and private--reasons women and girls might have to not want to carry a pregnancy to term, even if adoption were an easier and less costly option than it currently is.

Secondly, Steve Jobs' life experience doesn't work as an argument for limited abortion access, even by its own logic.

It is a fact that Steve Jobs was born before the legalization of abortion in the United States.  It has been suggested that Jobs' biological mother, faced with an unwanted pregnancy, contemplated having an abortion before she decided to carry the pregnancy to term and give the infant up for adoption. Her decision to do so was based on personal, and private, considerations.  This is as it should be.

Had Steve Jobs' biological mother decided to terminate her pregnancy in 1954 when she discovered she was expecting, she would have had to have an illegal and therefore potentially unsafe abortion.  And she might have died as a result, as more than half a million women worldwide continue to do every year because abortion access is illegal or severely restricted in their countries. Let us not wish ourselves back.

Gay Marriage: The Issue Is Respect

@HuffingtonPost

Earlier this year, a student in a human rights seminar I was teaching declared her conviction that gay parents damage their children by virtue of being gay. I explained as gently as I could why this is a discriminatory notion, incompatible with human rights standards, and moved on. My student sat as if stunned for two minutes, then gathered her books and left the class.

She later confronted me outside the classroom, and I was astonished to see just how fervently she insisted that her opinion was both based on science and respectful of rights. Neither is true. As New York State joins the ranks of countries and other jurisdictions recognizing same-sex marriage, it's worth reflecting on rights and respect.

The fact is that thousands of human beings are subjected to violence across they globe simply because they are suspected of being gay. In Brazil alone, over 2,500 men were murdered between 1997 and 2007, ostensibly for being gay. In the United States, the It Gets Better Project has highlighted the sustained violence and bullying young people suffer just because they aren't straight. This month, the United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time condemned violence and other human rights violations based on a person's sexual orientation or identity.

Of course, those who oppose same-sex marriage in New York State and elsewhere are not saying they support violence against LGBTQ people. Nevertheless, the same basic proposition lies at the root of both: the notion that you are somehow a different -- lesser -- type of human being if you are not, or are not seen to be, straight, and that society is justified in rejecting you.

For too many people it is only a short leap from seeing homosexuality as offensive to justifying physical harm. In this way, for example, the ban on inter-racial marriage in this country coexisted with societal acceptance of violence against people of color. Many times, inter-racial couples suffered violence precisely because they dared to break the ban.

But perhaps the deepest-held notion is the one that was expressed so vehemently by my student: that all children brought up by LGBTQ persons are psychologically damaged. Fortunately, it is increasingly recognized that it is not exposure to diversity but rather to bigotry and prejudice that is damaging to kids. In 2008, the European Court on Human Rights held that France was not allowed to deny the adoption application of a women just because she was a lesbian. And in February, the High Court in the United Kingdom barred a couple from becoming foster parents because their anti-gay views were held to be potentially harmful to the children who would be in their care.

In fact, research shows that children with gay parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children with straight parents, and that the key to childhood adjustment is good relationships between parents and children and between the parents themselves.

Marriage, of course, does not guarantee good relationships. But where family leave and other benefits depend on marital status, children are disadvantaged if their parents are not allowed to marry. The vote in Albany this week is significant because it is another step toward guaranteeing children and adults the rights and respect they are entitled to.