Nursing Homes Evicting Elderly
VANESSA HO
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 10, 2009

For two years, Irene Henderer lived at the West Woods boarding home in Olympia, where she was known for her lively stories and sharp wit. But in November 2007, the home gave Henderer an eviction notice, along with 20 other Medicaid residents.

Henderer, 89, grew depressed and refused to leave her room for meals. As her move approached, she quietly asked her guardian: “Why can’t I just die here?”

Three days after moving out, Henderer’s congestive heart failure worsened. A month later, she died.
“That was her home,” said Pam Privette, Henderer’s legal guardian. “If she could have stayed there, we would not have gone through any of this — the depression, the giving up on life. This pre-empted a natural death, in my opinion.”

As health care costs rise and Medicaid rates lag behind, nursing and boarding homes are forcing out sick, elderly and frail residents in what advocates say is a growing trend. No official data exist on eviction counts, but discharge complaints have climbed to record highs.

The Washington Long-Term Care Ombudsman program handled more than 700 such complaints last year, nearly a 50 percent increase over the year before. Nationally, discharge-related complaints have more than doubled in a decade — to 12,000 in 2007, according to the U.S. Administration on Aging

Mississippi Passes Legislation Protecting Gun Owners During Martial Law
Infowars
February 11, 2009

Mississippi lawmakers have passed a bill to protect the state’s residents during martial law. On the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi website, Phil Bryant announces the passage of SB 2036. The legislation “restricts the power of a peace officer to confiscate firearms and ammunitions in an emergency or during a time of martial law,” according to the website. 
     
     
    
Senator Merle Flowers    
  
It is significant that Lieutenant Governor Bryant mentions the law applies to martial law.

Mississippi senator Merle Flowers authored the bill and referred it to the Judiciary on January 6. It passed the Senate on February 4. According to the Mississippi bill status website, the act amends Section 33-7-303 of Mississippi Code of 1972 and “explicitly restrict the power to confiscate firearms and ammunitions in an emergency.”
Mississippi passes the law reaffirming the Second Amendment at approximately the same time a number of states are introducing and passing resolutions and bills declaring sovereignty from the federal government and buttressing the Tenth Amendment.

To Spank or Not To Spank?
 
 
When we think of babies, we tend to think of the joy they bring, their sweetness and beauty. Their faces cause our hearts to melt, their tiny feet and tiny hands just beg to be kissed. The word "innocent" usually comes to mind, and innocent they are of personal sin. But what must never be forgotten is that babies are born in a state lacking sanctifying grace -- a state we refer to as "original sin." Even after Baptism, when the eternal effects of original sin have been blotted out, the temporal effects of original sin remain. These effects make us prone to personal sin, to indulge the lower appetites, to selfishness. The baby, though perfectly innocent of personal sin, is not considering the needs of others, and when the baby grows, he is able to manifest his concupiscence in actual sins. It is this tendency toward sin that is natural to the human being and which must be dealt with carefully, with sound discipline.

To raise emotionally healthy children, parents need to be just, fair, reasonable, in control, bendable but not breakable, affectionate, honest, understanding, emotionally affirming, and grounded firmly in Christ and in the knowledge of what ultimate pupose parenting serves -- to raise children to know, love, and serve God. Consistency and unity between the parents in carrying out this goal are absolutely crucial, and before a couple marry, they should talk deeply with one another to determine how they will raise any children God blesses them with and to help ensure they can achieve the necessary consistency and unity in their lives as parents.

It seems that the children of those who want to be only their child's "buddy," who are permissive, and afraid of their children's disappointment, are constantly pushing against boundaries they can't see, trying to find one.

The children of those who are controlling, rigid, power-hungry, angry, emotionally cold and unaffirming grow up angry and wanting to rebel against it all.

And the children of parents who are not consistent and unified become confused and unable to discern. They come to have no firm foothold to balance on while trying to make judgements about the world and themselves. They become manipulative, playing one parent off the other, and their homes are places of tension and stress as one parent resents the other for being lax, weak, oblivious, and the "kiddies' best friend" while he or she has to be "mean" and say no. No parent should ever be the "good guy" -- the permissive, "fun one" -- while the other goes about the necessary business of setting boundaries. This is the stuff that tears parents apart (and trust me, you "good guys" out there: while children "love" the "can't say no" types when they are young, they grow up to resent them and have little respect for them later. You can count on it.)

One issue of vital concern is that of corporal punishment -- spanking. It has become trendy to believe that spanking is always wrong and only "teaches children to be violent." There are certainly abusive parents in the world. There are those who spank when they could reason, who humiliate children in public, who spank in a physically abusive way, or who don't see spanking as a sad, rare duty but as a way of venting. But at times, and though spanking should be a last resort always, corporal punishment is not only necessary, but just, and crucial to the child's development as a Christian and a member of society. To show how this is simply the way it is, to prove that our ancestors throughout the ages weren't so wrong after all, I present this study conducted by John S. Lyons and Robert E. Larzerle. They observed what happened in Sweden when spanking was made illegal in 1979, and found that child abuse rates shot up an amazing 489% over the next decade or so, as did the rates of assaults by minors against other minors, which shot up 672% in that same time period. Their conclusions (my emphasis):
Why might Sweden experience an increasing child abuse rate and an increase in assaults by minors after outlawing corporal punishment? Haeuser's (198 description of some parental frustration and yelling in 1981 might indicate an increased risk of escalation to abuse at that time. This is reminiscent of Baumrind's (1973) observation of permissive parents. Compared to authoritative and authoritarian parents, permissive parents were the most likely to report "explosive attacks of rage in which they inflicted more pain or injury upon the child than they had intended. . . . Permissive parents apparently became violent because they felt that they could neither control the child's behavior nor tolerate its effect upon themselves" (Baumrind, 1973, p. 35). Permissive parents used spanking less than did either authoritative or authoritarian parents. So it could be that the prohibition of all spanking eliminates a type of mild spanking that prevents further escalation of aggression within discipline incidents (see Patterson's [1982] coercive family process). Haeuser's (198 report suggests that Swedish parents later developed new, firm discipline responses that reduced escalations to yelling and possibly to child abuse.
If, in your parental heart, you believe that a spanking is due, take courage in what you intuit and what you can see from the effects of our permissiveness on our culture. Be reasonable, be prudent, be forgiving, and most affectionate -- but do what is best for your child's soul (which would require that spanking be rare, a last resort, and always -- always -- coupled with communication and emotional validation). The abstract from the study is below...

Where is Evidence That Non-Abusive
Corporal Punishment Increases Aggression?
John S. Lyons, University of Northwestern Medical School, Chicago, IL, USA Robert E. Larzelere, Father Flanagan's Boys' Home Boys Town, NE, USA

Abstract
Two recent reviews of parental corporal punishment have found little sound evidence of detrimental child outcomes such as child aggression. This paper explores whether the 1979 Swedish law against all corporal punishment has reduced their child abuse. Sweden's 1979 law was welcomed by many as a much needed policy toward reducing physical child abuse. Surprisingly, this search located only five published studies with any relevant data. The best study found that the rate of child abuse was 49% higher in Sweden than in the United States, comparing a 1980 Swedish national survey with the average rates from two national surveys in the United States in 1975 and 1985. By comparison, a retrospective survey of university students in 1981 found that the Swedish child abuse rate was 21% of the USA rate in the 1960s and the 1970s, prior to the anti-spanking law. More recent Swedish data indicate a 489% increase in one child abuse statistic from 1981 through 1994, as well as a 672% increase in assaults by minors against minors. The article discusses possible reasons for this apparent increase in child abuse and calls for better evaluations of innovative policies intended to reduce societal abuse and violence.

Poster presented at the XXVI International Congress of Psychology, Montreal, August 18, 1996

Send correspondence about this paper to: Robert E. Larzelere, Psychology Dept., 985450 Univ. of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198; Email: rlarzelere@unmc.edu; (402) 559-2282

Where is Evidence That Non-Abusive
Corporal Punishment Increases Aggression?
Two recent reviews of the literature on parental corporal punishment have found few methodologically sound studies. Further, hardly any of the soundest studies found detrimental child outcomes associated with corporal punishment. This paper explores whether there is evidence that the outlawing of corporal punishment by parents in Sweden and other countries has had any discernible effect, particularly on child abuse and, to a lesser degree, on child outcomes such as aggression.

Lyons, Anderson, and Larson (1993) attempted to review all journal articles on corporal punishment by parents from 1984 through 1993. Only 24 of the 132 articles (17%) included any empirical data on corporal punishment. Less than half of those (11) investigated corporal punishment as a possible cause of some other variable. Most (83%) of the studies were cross-sectional, and only one made any attempt to exclude child abuse from the measure of corporal punishment.

They concluded that there was empirical evidence supporting one of three hypotheses: Several studies found that parents were more likely to use corporal punishment themselves if their parents had used it. There was no sound evidence that corporal punishment was ineffective, nor that it was associated with child aggression.

Larzelere (in press) built on their review by extending the search of peer-reviewed articles to the period 1974 to 1995 plus older articles that met the inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were designed to exclude studies that were cross-sectional or whose measures emphasized the severity of usage of corporal punishment. Only 18 studies were found that both met the two inclusion criteria and limited the sample to children under 13 years of age. The 8 strongest studies found beneficial outcomes of corporal punishment, usually in 2- to 6-year-olds. The 10 other studies were prospective (6) or retrospective (4). Three of them found detrimental outcomes, but only 1 of those 3 made any attempt to exclude abuse from its measure of corporal punishment. Further, none of the 10 studies controlled for the initial level of child misbehavior. This seems to be an important methodological problem, since the frequency of every type of discipline response tends to be positively associated with child misbehavior, whether the associations are cross-sectional or longitudinal (Larzelere, Sather, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, 1996; Larzelere, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, in press). Finally, no alternative discipline response in any of the 18 studies was associated with more beneficial child outcomes than was corporal punishment, whereas 7 alternatives were associated with more detrimental child outcomes, mostly in 2- to 6-year-olds.

These reviews suggest that the empirical linkage between nonabusive corporal punishment and aggression comes only from cross-sectional studies, studies of teenagers, studies measuring particularly severe forms of corporal punishment, and, perhaps, studies of punitiveness. This led us to ask how well current societal experiments are working in countries that have outlawed all forms of parental use of corporal punishment.

In 1979, Sweden passed a law prohibiting all corporal punishment by parents. This was hailed as a crucial step in the effort to reduce child abuse (Deley, 1988; Feshbach, 1980; Ziegert, 1983). Several countries have passed similar laws since then (Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Cyprus), and organizations have formed to advocate against parental corporal punishment throughout the world (e.g., End Physical Punishment of Children [EPOCH]: Radda Barnen, no date).

This movement represents one of the most sweeping changes ever advocated by social scientists. In the United States, for example, about 90% of parents have spanked their 3-year-old children in the past year (Straus, 1983; Wauchope & Straus, 1990). Some social scientific research has been used to support the anti-spanking position (e.g., Hyman, 1995; Straus, 1994), but the reviews summarized above have found such support coming primarily from methodologically poor studies. Given the inconclusiveness of relevant research and the importance of the issue, it is desirable to know whether child abuse has decreased in Sweden following their 1979 anti-spanking law. Accordingly, this article asks two inter-related questions 1) To what extent have social scientists evaluated the effect of the 1979 anti-spanking law in Sweden, and (2) what do those evaluations indicate about the effects of the anti-spanking law in reducing child abuse? We also report one finding about Swedish trends in assaults by minors discovered during our study.

Literature Search for Evaluations

Two procedures were used to find evaluations of the effects of Sweden's anti-spanking law. First, PsycLit was searched from 1974 through June of 1995 for all publications that included "Sweden" or "Swedish" and either "punishment" or "spanking" in their abstracts. Second, Social Sciences Citation Index was used to identify all articles citing Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) through April 1995, because their study reported a well-done survey of Swedish child abuse rates one year after the anti-spanking law was passed.

Empirical Evaluations of Sweden's Anti-Spanking Law

Five published studies and one unpublished paper were found that included any empirical information relevant for evaluating the 1979 anti-spanking law. Ziegert (1983) published a conceptual, preliminary article on why the law should be effective. His only empirical data was from a Swedish opinion poll showing that the percentage of respondents considering corporal punishment to be necessary had dropped from 53% in 1965 to 35% in 1971 to 26% in 1979 and 1981. In an article comparing Swedish and American use of corporal punishment, Solheim (1982) reported that 26% of Swedish respondents considered corporal punishment necessary in 1978. Like Ziegert (1983), Solheim's (1982) article was mostly nonempirical, discussing such issues as court decisions about corporal punishment in schools, the 1979 law, and expert opinions. Together these two articles show that the decline in support for the necessity of parental corporal punishment in Sweden preceded the 1979 law, and it did not decrease thereafter, at least through 1981.

A third article reported the rate of child homicides in various European countries, comparing 1973/1974 with approximately 1987/1988 (Pritchard, 1992). Note that this compared statistics before and after the 1979 law. The Swedish child homicide rate was the sixth lowest of the 17 countries at both time periods. However, it nearly doubled from 1973/1974 to 1986/1987. Sweden's 93% increase in its child homicide rate was the fifth largest percentage increase among the 17 countries. It should also be noted that the rate of accidental baby deaths in Sweden was the lowest of the 17 countries at both time periods. Unlike the child homicide rate, it decreased by 67% between the two time periods, although 10 of the other 16 countries decreased their accidental baby death rates by an even larger percentage.

A fourth article compared child abuse rates among university students at one Swedish university compared to one American university as reported in a 1981 survey (Deley, 198 . Because these were retrospective reports, they were child abuse rates during the 1960s and the 1970s as these students were growing up, a time period preceding the 1979 law. The critical question asked whether a spanking had ever left physical marks that lasted for more than 10 minutes. Two percent of the Sweden students reported receiving such physical marks from a spanking, compared to 9.5% of the American students. Although this is far from a representative sample, this suggests that the child abuse rate in Sweden was only 21% of the American child abuse rate in the 1960s and 1970s (i.e., 2.0 divided by 9.5 = .21).

The fifth and best study used telephone surveys of a nationally representative sample of Swedish parents to measure the rates of spanking and of child abuse in 1980 (Gelles & Edfeldt, 1986). It used the Conflict Tactics Scale, which was also used to measure the prevalence of spanking and child abuse in two National Family Violence Surveys in the USA (Straus & Gelles, 1986; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) compared their 1980 Swedish survey only with the 1975 National Family Violence Survey. They concluded that a smaller percentage of parents were spanking their children in Sweden than in the United States, but that there were no significant differences in child abuse rates.

It would have been more appropriate, however, to compare their 1980 Swedish survey with the 1985 National Family Violence Survey in the USA (Straus & Gelles, 1986), which reported a 47% lower rate of child abuse in the United States than in 1975. For one thing, the 1980 Swedish survey was closer to the 1985 USA survey in its method, because both used telephone interviews. In contrast, the 1975 USA survey used face-to-face interviews. Table 1 gives the percentage of Swedish and United States parents reporting the use of various forms of physical aggression in both national surveys in the United States and the national survey in Sweden. In contrast to Gelles & Edfeldt (1986), we report whether the Swedish rate was significantly different from the mean USA rate from both the 1975 and the 1985 surveys. This approach represents a compromise on the issue of which USA survey is the most appropriate comparison, and it assumes that the 1980 rates in the USA might have been halfway between the 1975 and the 1985 rates.

See Table 1

As can be seen, significantly fewer Swedish parents spanked or hit their child with an object, compared to USA parents. Nonetheless, 27% of Swedish parents reported spanking or slapping their child in the past year, reflecting imperfect compliance with the law. In contrast, most of the more serious types of physical aggression occurred more often in Sweden one year after passing the anti-spanking law than they did in the United States. The rate of beating a child up was three times as high in Sweden as in the United States, the rate of using a weapon was twice as high, and the overall rate of Very Severe Violence was 49% higher in Sweden than the United States average from the 1975 and 1985 surveys. Except for weapon usage, all of these differences were significantly different using a test of differences between proportions (Downie & Heath, 1974, chap. 13), p < .05. In addition, the rate of pushing, grabbing, or shoving was 39% higher in Sweden than the average rate in the United States, p < .001. Thus, the rate of spanking was significantly lower in Sweden than in the United States, but the rate of other forms of physical aggression, including child abuse, was significantly higher in Sweden than in the United States.

Because there were so few published studies with relevant empirical data, we also included an unpublished field study by Haeuser (198 and sought additional data from Swedish sources. As co-founder of EPOCH-USA, an organization advocating the banning of all corporal punishment in the United States, Haeuser (198 explicitly wanted to "promote positive visibility of this Swedish law in the U.S. and garner U.S. support for the possibility of promoting U.S. parenting norms which avoid physical punishment" (p. 2). Her paper was based on her 1981 and 1988 field visits to Sweden, using extensive interviews of 7 parents and 60 personnel in government, health and human services, and schools.

In the summary, she concluded, "Most, if not all, believe the law has not affected the incidence of child abuse" (p. iii). Specifically, she reported that concerns about sexual abuse and youth gang violence had superseded concerns about physical child abuse by 1988. She also reported that she observed toddlers and young children often hitting their parents in her 1988 visit.

According to her, "In 1981 both parents and professionals agreed that parents had not . . . found constructive alternatives to physical punishment [within the two years since the law was passed]. For most parents the alternative was yelling and screaming at their children, and some believed this was equally, perhaps more, destructive" (p. 22). Haeuser went on to report that most Swedish parents had developed firmer discipline techniques by 1988.

Haeuser (198 concluded that the child abuse rate was lower in Sweden than in the USA based on Swedish police statistics of 6.5 cases of physical child abuse per 1000 children in 1986. Haeuser compared this to a "U. S. rate of 9.2 to 10.7" per 1000 (Haeuser, 1988, p. 34), but acknowledged, "Since the Swedish police data omits child abuse cases known to social services but not warranting police intervention, the actual Swedish incidence rate is probably higher" (p. 34).

However, the American survey that she cited (National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect [NCCAN], 198 indicated that the basis of the rate of 9.2 or 10.7 per 1000 differed from the Swedish police statistic in two ways. First, the USA rate included sexual and emotional abuse as well as physical abuse. Second, the USA rate included not only cases known to police, but also cases known to at least one professional across a wide range of occupations, including those in child protection services, public health, education (schools, daycare centers), hospitals, mental health, and social services. If limited to only physical abuse, the USA rate was only 4.9 or 5.7 known to at least one of these professionals, depending upon the definition of physical child abuse. If limited to all three kinds of abuse known specifically to police or sheriffs, the USA rate was only 2.2 per 1000 (NCCAN, 198 .

The most relevant statistics we have obtained from Sweden are police-record trends in physical abuse of children under 7 years of age (Wittrock, 1992, 1995). Those records showed a 489% increase in the child abuse rate from 1981 to 1994 (see Figure 1). The same police records also indicated a 672% increase in assaults by minors against minors (under 15 in Sweden) from 1981 to 1994 (see Figure 2).

Discussion and Conclusions

Although the Swedish anti-spanking law was intended to reduce child abuse, the best empirical study since then indicated that the rate of child abuse in Sweden was 49% higher than in the United States one year after the anti-spanking law was passed. Does this mean that the anti-spanking law increased the rate of physical child abuse in Sweden? Deley's (198 retrospective data indicates that the Swedish physical child abuse rate was 21% of the USA rate in the 1960s and 1970s. This suggests that the anti-spanking law not only failed to achieve its goal of reducing child abuse, but that the child abuse rate increased from 21% to 149% of the equivalent USA rate, a seven-fold increase relative to the decreasing rate in the United States. We doubt that the increase was actually that substantial, because Deley used a retrospective measure with a small unrepresentative sample. Nonetheless, the available evidence suggests that a sizeable increase in the Swedish child abuse rate occurred around the time of the 1979 anti-spanking law. The other studies indicate no changes in attitudes about corporal punishment nor in child homicides due to the 1979 law.

Was the apparent increase in the Swedish child abuse rate only a temporary increase following their anti-spanking law? More recent data on Swedish child abuse rates would help answer that question. One piece of subsequent data was the 6.5 cases of physical child abuse per 1,000 children in official 1986 Swedish police statistics, which was substantially higher than the 2.2 per 1,000 known to police or sheriffs in the USA. The other available evidence is the sharp increase in physical child abuse in Swedish police records from 1981 through 1994, along with a similar sharp increase in certain assaults by minors.

Why might Sweden experience an increasing child abuse rate and an increase in assaults by minors after outlawing corporal punishment? Haeuser's (198 description of some parental frustration and yelling in 1981 might indicate an increased risk of escalation to abuse at that time. This is reminiscent of Baumrind's (1973) observation of permissive parents. Compared to authoritative and authoritarian parents, permissive parents were the most likely to report "explosive attacks of rage in which they inflicted more pain or injury upon the child than they had intended. . . . Permissive parents apparently became violent because they felt that they could neither control the child's behavior nor tolerate its effect upon themselves" (Baumrind, 1973, p. 35). Permissive parents used spanking less than did either authoritative or authoritarian parents. So it could be that the prohibition of all spanking eliminates a type of mild spanking that prevents further escalation of aggression within discipline incidents (see Patterson's [1982] coercive family process). Haeuser's (198 report suggests that Swedish parents later developed new, firm discipline responses that reduced escalations to yelling and possibly to child abuse. But adequate data on the resulting child abuse rates are lacking.

In conclusion, the available Swedish data indicate that we cannot reduce child abuse just by mandating that parents stop using corporal punishment. Parents also need new, effective techniques to replace corporal punishment if it is to be outlawed. It is even possible that mild corporal punishment may play an important role in preventing escalation to abuse for some parents.

The other surprise is that there has been so little empirical evaluation of the effects of Sweden's anti-spanking law. Perhaps it has seemed so obvious that eliminating parental spanking would reduce the child abuse rate that people have felt that no evaluation was needed. If so, this summary of available evidence should shake us out of our premature complacency. The role of parental discipline responses in preventing aggression in parent and child is surprisingly complex (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Patterson, 1982; Snyder & Patterson, 1995). We need better research to understand the complexities involved in parental discipline, including its relationship to child abuse. We need to discriminate effective from counterproductive forms of discipline responses, including the role of different forms of corporal punishment in increasing or decreasing the risk of child abuse. We also need better evaluations of policies designed to change parental discipline, given that the effects of the Swedish anti-spanking law seem to have had exactly the opposite effect of its intention, at least in the short term.

References

Baumrind, D. (1973). The development of instrumental competence through socializtion. In A. D. Pick (Ed.), Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology (vol. 7, pp. 3-46). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deley, W. W. (198 . Physical punishment of children: Sweden and the U.S.A. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 19, 419-431.

Downie, N. M., & Heath, R. W. (1974). Basic statistical methods (4th ed.). New York: Harper & Row.

Feshbach, N. D. (1980). Tomorrow is here today in Sweden. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 9, 109-112. Gelles, R. J., & Edfeldt, A. W. (1986). Violence towards children in the United States and Sweden. Child Abuse & Neglect, 10, 501-510.

Grusec, J. E., & Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Summing up and looking to the future. Developmental Psychology, 30, 29-31.

Haeuser, A. A. (198 . Reducing violence towards U.S. children: Transferring positive innovations from Sweden. Unpublished manuscript, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Social Welfare & University Outreach, Milwaukee.

Hyman, I. A. (1995). Corporal punishment, psychological maltreatment, violence, and punitiveness in America: Research, advocacy, and public policy. Applied & Preventive Psychology, 4, 113-130.

Larzelere, R. E. (in press). A review of the outcomes of parental use of nonabusive or customary physical punishment. Pediatrics.

Larzelere, R. E., Sather, P. R., Schneider, W. N., Larson, D. B., & Pike, P. L. (1996, August). Power assertion enhances reasoning's effectiveness as a discipline response. Poster presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto.

Larzelere, R. E., Schneider, W. N., Larson, D. B., & Pike, P. L. (in press). The effects of discipline responses in delaying toddler misbehavior recurrences. Child & Family Behavior Therapy.

Lyons, J. S., Anderson, R. L., & Larson, D. B. (1993, November). The use and effects of physical punishment in the home: A systematic review. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Washington, DC. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (198 . Study findings: Study of national incidence and prevalence of child abuse and neglect; 1988 (Contract No. 105-85-1702). Washington, D.C.: Administration for Children, Youth and Families.

Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive family process. Eugene, OR: Castalia Press.

Pritchard, C. (1992). Children's homicide as an indicator of effective child protection: A comparative study of western European statistics. British Journal of Social Work, 22, 663-684.

Radda Barnen. (No date). Hitting people is wrong--and children are people too. London: Association for the Protection of All Children.

Snyder, J. J., & Patterson, G. R. (1995). Individual differences in social aggression: A test of a reinforcement model of socialization in the natural environment. Behavior Therapy, 26, 371-391.

Solheim, J. S. (1982). A cross-cultural examination of use of corporal punishment on children: A focus on Sweden and the United States. Child Abuse and Neglect, 6, 147-154.

Straus, M. A. (1983). Ordinary violence, child abuse, and wife-beating. In D. Finkelhor, R. J. Gelles, G. T. Hotaling, & M. A. Straus (Eds.), The dark side of families: Current family violence research (pp. 213-234). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Straus, M. A. (1994). Beating the devil out of them: Corporal punishment in American families. New York: Lexington Books.

Straus, M. A., & Gelles, R. J. (1986). Societal change and change in family violence from 1975 to 1985 as revealed by the national surveys. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 48, 465-479.

Straus, M. A., Gelles, R. J., & Steinmetz, S. K. (1980). Behind closed doors: Violence in the American family. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Wauchope, B. A., & Straus, M. A. (1990). Physical punishment and physical abuse of American children: Incidence rates by age, gender, and occupational class. In M. A. Straus & R. J. Gelles (Eds.), Physical violence in American families (pp. 133-14 . New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Wittrock, U. (1992). Barnmisshandel i kriminalstatistiken, 1981-1991. KR info, 1992:7 (Kriminalstatistik vid SCB, Stockholm).

Wittrock, U. (1995). Barnmisshandel, 1984-1994. KR info, 1995:5 (Kriminalstatistik vid SCB, Stockholm). Ziegert, K. A. (1983). The Swedish prohibition of corporal punishment: A preliminary report. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 917-926.
Table 1
Prevalence Rates of Various Forms of
Physical Child Abuse in the United States and Sweden
           
     United States    Sweden    
  Type of Violence    1975  1985  1980    
  1.  Threw things at  5.4%  2.7%  3.6%    
  2.  Pushed, grabbed, or shoved  40.5  30.7  49.4***    
  3.  Hit (spanked or slapped)  58.2  54.9  27.5***    
  4.  Kicked, bit, or hit with fist  3.2  1.3  2.2    
  5.  Hit with an object1  13.4  9.7  2.4***    
  6.  Beat up  1.3  .6  3.0***    
  7.  Threatened with a weapon  .1  .2  .4    
  8.  Used a weapon  .1  .2  .4    
   Very Severe Violence (4, 6-  3.6  1.9  4.0*    
  1 In the United States this item referred to attempted or completed hits. In Sweden, the item referred only to completed hits. The 1975 and 1980 surveys are taken from Gelles & Edfeldt (1986) and the 1985 survey from Straus & Gelles (1986).

*p <.05, 2-tailed t-test of proportions, comparing the combined USA samples with the Swedish sample.

***p < .001, same test.

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 There's a Stranger in Your House
by Jerry McGuire
 
On an average of six times a day, there's a stranger in your house, a stranger who has free access to your children and unlimited influence on their lives. The task of the stranger is simple. Its goal is to limit our ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. After all, that's what the stranger is all about.

The stranger often teaches our children things we would detest. It uses language which is gross and offensive. It shows our children things which are shocking and repulsive. This stranger has no concern for the age, experience or vulnerability of its victims. The stranger comes visiting at all hours without warning and is devious regarding its true intent. Its messages are often deceptive and appealing to young, innocent minds.

This stranger is cunning and has learned through years of practice and billions of dollars in research, how to enter the very soul of its prisoners. It has become an expert at exploiting audiences and trains them to go seek new participants. Recently the stranger has been "transformed" into a plastic cartridge which allows it to enter your home anytime and deliver its message of demand without time constraints.

The stranger has become so accepted in our homes that it has been given a place of honor in most of our rooms. It has even been allowed to join us during meals, as long as the meals do not disturb its message. Ironically, whenever the stranger joins us, it usually becomes the center of attention, rather than a stranger. At our dining tables we allow it to talk about things which would not be allowed during most family discussions.

Although this stranger can be crude, obscene and vulgar, we have decided that it can explain some things better than parents. We have given it permission to explain life, sex, family values, ethics and love. We depend upon it to define our values and priorities. We've turned over child care and family entertainment to its expertise. We've determined that we cannot live without its stimulation, motivation and sublimation. We have submitted ourselves, the lives of our children, to this stranger.

We spend untold hours telling our children of the dangers of strangers. We teach them not to talk to strangers, walk with strangers, ride with strangers or take things from strangers. However, with this special stranger, anything goes.

Everyday for an average of six hours, we give our children to the "stranger of the tube." Everyday the stranger talks to our children more than most parents do in a month. We allow the stranger to teach them things and use language for which we would have a real stranger arrested. We allow the stranger to cheat, lie, demonstrate how to commit crimes and how to avoid, and beat, our judicial system.

Without hesitation, the stranger mocks parents, belittles people of honor, makes fun of moral values, denies honorable beliefs, and scoffs at family and cultural traditions.

The stranger is powerful. It has thousands of employees who further its causes and develop its sophistication. It is so powerful that if it stops performing, we will use any means to acquire a new one immediately -- usually bigger, better, louder, and more detailed and preferably with attachable appendages to assist the stranger in accomplishing its purpose.

Recently some interested groups are advocating that the stranger should become a regular part of the daily curriculum in our schools. It would be allowed to visit our children without censorship or a preview of its presentation or contents. It would also be allowed to advertise its supporters and special interests.

Fortunately, the stranger is not entirely evil. Like any visitor, it has characteristics of value and interest. However, its behavior and influence on the lives of our children must be monitored. Parents must determine how much influence they want to turn over to the stranger when it is visiting.

There's a stranger in your house. It's keeping our children from doing their homework. It's preventing parents and children from talking together. The stranger is coming between members of the family. It has become the center of our society. We might consider scheduling its visits, and determining what we will allow the stranger to discuss and demonstrates when it visits our family.

Additional Articles

TV Linked to Kids' Attention Problems
Apr 5, 6:49 AM (ET)
By Lindsey Tanner

CHICAGO (AP) - Researchers have found that every hour preschoolers watch television each day boosts their chances - by about 10 percent - of developing attention deficit problems later in life.

The findings back up previous research showing that television can shorten attention spans and support American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations that youngsters under age 2 not watch television.

"The truth is there are lots of reasons for children not to watch television. Other studies have shown it to be associated with obesity and aggressiveness" too, said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a researcher at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.

The study, appearing in the April issue of Pediatrics, focused on two groups of children - aged 1 and 3 - and suggested that TV might overstimulate and permanently "rewire" the developing brain.

The study involved 1,345 children who participated in government-sponsored national health surveys. Their parents were questioned about the children's TV viewing habits and rated their behavior at age 7 on a scale similar to measures used in diagnosing attention deficit disorders.

The researchers lacked data on whether the youngsters were diagnosed with attention deficit disorders but the number of children whose parents rated them as having attention problems - 10 percent - is similar to the prevalence in the general population, Christakis said. Problems included difficulty concentrating, acting restless and impulsive, and being easily confused.

About 36 percent of the 1-year-olds watched no TV, while 37 percent watched one to two hours daily and had a 10 percent to 20 percent increased risk of attention problems. Fourteen percent watched three to four hours daily and had a 30 percent to 40 percent increased risk compared with children who watched no TV. The remainder watched at least five hours daily.

Among 3-year-olds, only 7 percent watched no TV, 44 percent watched one to two hours daily, 27 percent watched three to four hours daily, almost 11 percent watched five to six hours daily, and about 10 percent watched seven or more hours daily.

In a Pediatrics editorial, educational psychologist Jane Healy said the study "is important and long overdue" but needs to be followed up to confirm and better explain the mechanisms that may be involved.

The researchers didn't know what shows the children watched, but Christakis said content likely isn't the culprit. Instead, he said, unrealistically fast-paced visual images typical of most TV programming may alter normal brain development.

"The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life. It's really being wired" during that time, Christakis said.

"We know from studies of newborn rats that if you expose them to different levels of visual stimuli ... the architecture of the brain looks very different" depending on the amount of stimulation, he said.

Overstimulation during this critical period "can create habits of the mind that are ultimately deleterious," Christakis said. If this theory holds true, the brain changes likely are permanent, but children with attention problems can be taught to compensate, he said.

The researchers considered factors other than TV that might have made some children prone to attention problems, including their home environment and mothers' mental states.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in 1999 that children under the age of 2 should not watch television because of concerns it affects early brain growth and the development of social, emotional and cognitive skills.

Jennifer Kotler, assistant director for research at Sesame Workshop, which produces educational children's television programs including "Sesame Street," questioned whether the results in the April Pediatrics would apply to educational programming.

"We do not ignore this research," but more is needed on variables that could affect the impact of early exposure to television, including whether content or watching TV with a parent makes a difference, Kotler said.

"There's a lot of research... that supports the positive benefits of educational programming," she said.

The Hidden Dangers of Television
Published at http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/Catholic_Morality/Dangers-of-Television.htm

Children's development needs

Children learn so much in their first three years compared to the rest of their lives. They learn to walk, to speak and experience the awakening of thinking as they grow from being babies to infants. Through play, children develop their knowledge of things, their relationships

Television watching itself affects child development regardless of the programme content. Recent research show that television watching adversely affects children's thinking, speaking, imagination, senses, physique, feelings, and behaviour. It is important for parents to be aware of these effects.

T.V. watching as an experience

Television watching puts children into a passive, trance-like state where they become "TV zombies" a condition quite different from their active, playful state when not watching. Some parents observed that: "my five year old goes into a trance when he watches TV He just gets locked into what is happening on the screen. He's totally, absolutely absorbed when he watches and oblivious to anything else." After television watching children can be irritable. "After watching they're nervous, bored, disagreeable, slowly coming back to normal." What, then, do children experience while watching television?

TV addiction

Marie Winn calls television the 'plug-in-drug' because many people find they cannot stop watching. People joke about being "hooked on TV" Someone said "I watch TV the way an alcoholic drinks."

Not unlike drugs and alcohol, TV watching allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state, where worries and anxieties cannot intrude. The typical vacant state of someone on drugs or alcohol is very similar to the state of the TV watcher.

The eyes need to be completely passive in order to watch TV i.e. a fixed focus, no voluntary eye movements and a fixed head position. It is as if instead of the imagery arising from within as in day dreaming, it is produced mechanically for the watcher by the television.ips with other children, their physical control and their imagination. Playing is a child's work, and channels energy constructively into the learning processes. It is essentially active. Children learn through imitating other children and the adults who tell stories, nursery rhymes, speak with them, and who can provide everyday activities such as baking or making pictures.

TV retards brain development

The brain is patterned by the senses, by movement, speech, thought and imagination. As the brain develops, children shift from a non-verbal "right hemisphere" dreaming consciousness to a verbal, logical "left hemisphere" state. Television watching prolongs children's dependency on the right hemisphere. The "brain" strain on children of forming 625 lines composed of over 800 dots appearing 25 times per second - into meaningful images must be considerable. With the lack of eye movement, this strain can produce sleeplessness, anxiety, nightmares, headaches, perceptual disorders, poor concentration and blunted senses. T. V. watching can produce sensory deprivation.

TV and speaking

Children learn to speak by talking with real people, not by listening to mechanically reproduced sound. Real people speaking communicate the meaning of words, whereas television only reproduces the sounds, a subtle but vital difference, confusing for toddlers. Television by emphasising the visual, reduces the need of children to learn how to speak; no verbal response is required of the child; thus speech is discouraged.

Members of a working-party on reading agreed that "Children knew nursery rhymes much less well than previously, largely because of television which was a "look and forget" rather than a "look and learn" medium.

TV encourages lazy readers

Reading involves concentration, accurate perception, imagination, the comprehension of a story line, and the freedom of the reader to vary the pace. Television, by causing the "vacant state" undermines concentration; by an overwhelming visual impact stultifies the imagination; by blunting the senses, interferes with the mechanics of reading; and by emphasising the nonverbal reduces children's enthusiasm for words.

A reduced sense of identity

Before television, there was a children's culture rich in games, songs and rhymes. Children could play longer, sustain interest more, play dramatically and were more active according to experienced nursery teachers. Television watching puts children into an untypically passive state in which they are deprived of their true work which is their play.

Children develop their sense of identity, of saying "I" to themselves in meeting real people. The people on TV are unreal, impersonal images which do little or nothing to awaken a child's sense of self. Hence "TV children" may tend to relate to themselves and others as things, objects, tools or even machines. This attitude may later develop into an inability to react constructively in social situations.

Anti-social behaviour

The content of violent programmes may affect children's behaviour, for children learn by imitation. However, the nature of the TV experience regardless of programme content may cause antisocial behaviour. Relating to others more as objects than human beings, a result of TV watching, can contribute to violence. Also, the television experience gives an illusion of participating in an activity when in fact one is totally passive, so that children who are heavy viewers are less able to judge the feelings, expectations and problems of others in real life situations.

The effects of radiation

Radiation and artificial light may affect children's health and vitality. The scientist Ott found that beans' growth in front of a TV set was distorted by toxic radiation into a vine like growth, with roots growing upwards out of the soil. Ott questioned what the excessive absorption of artificial light might do to children.

Almost no educational benefit

Which is better qualified to teach a young child, a machine or another human being? Experienced teachers have noted that children who watch quite a lot of television retain very little of its content after a short while (The "look and forget" Medium). This could be due to the fact that the children are not called-upon to be active; they are not engaging their will-power and creating their own imaginative pictures. The impression left by the TV images is superficial.

The American programme "Sesame Street" was specially designed to help disadvantaged pre-school children catch up cognitively and verbally with those from more fortunate backgrounds. A 1975 survey suggests that "Sesame Street" widened the achievement gap, and that light viewers exhibited more gains in learning than heavy viewers.

What can we do?

If you feel, after reading this, that you would like to change your family's habits with regard to television, how should you go about it? First, make sure that both parents are in agreement. Then realise that it will be difficult to get rid of television without putting other things in its place, especially if your family have been heavy viewers.

1 - Restrict firmly the number of programmes watched, or, if you are resolute enough, get rid of the TV set altogether. Or put it away and use it only for very special occasions.

2 - Offer alternative activities of a creative sort, e.g. crafts, puppetry, dressing-up drawing and painting, modelling, pets, various hobbies, sports, music, fork dancing, nature studies, gardening.

3 - Encourage reading of well-written books (classics). Read aloud to little ones.

4 - Aim at a positive and warm family life, interesting mealtimes, bedtime stories, singing, nursery rhymes, etc.

5 - Try to find friends who think the same way and help each other, e.g. organising children's parties together.