California proposes spanking ban

California wants to lead the way on nanny state laws. The Si Valley paper reports:

Sacramento - The state Legislature is about to weigh in on a question that stirs impassioned debate among moms and dads: Should parents spank their children?

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, wants to outlaw spanking children up to 3 years old. If she succeeds, California would become the first state in the nation to explicitly ban parents from smacking their kids. ...

The bill, which is still being drafted, will be written broadly, she added, prohibiting ``any striking of a child, any corporal punishment, smacking, hitting, punching, any of that.'' Lieber said it would be a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail or a fine up to $1,000, although a legal expert advising her on the proposal said first-time offenders would probably only have to attend parenting classes.

The idea there is that they don't want any accused spanker to have his day in court. Given the threat of losing your kid and spending a year in jail, the accused parents will accept a plea bargain to attend court-ordered parenting classes.

The idea is encountering skepticism even before it's been formally introduced. Beyond the debate among child psychologists -- many of whom believe limited spanking can be effective -- the bill is sure to face questions over how practical it is to enforce and opposition from some legislators who generally oppose what they consider ``nanny government.''

Not only is spanking effective, there is no scientific evidence that any other discipline method works any better.

``Where do you stop?'' asked Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, who said he personally agrees children under 3 shouldn't be spanked but has no desire to make it the law. ``At what point are we going to say we should pass a bill that every parent has to read a minimum of 30 minutes every night to their child? This is right along those same lines.''

Yes, that would be next, but there is no proven benefit to such reading either. The popular book Freakonomics cites a well-done study that showed no benefit in school among kids whose parents read to them.

``If my 6-year-old doesn't put his clothes in the hamper, I'm not going to whack him. He just won't get his clothes washed,'' said Peggy Hertzberg, 38, who teaches parenting classes at the YWCA. ``I think instead of banning spanking, parents need to learn different ways of disciplining and redirecting their children.'' ...

She is typical of the sort of kooks you'll have to listen to if you take one of those parenting classes. I'd like to spy on how she really raises her 6-year-old, because it is impossible to raise a kid that way. If you keep giving the kid choices like that, he will eventually make some unacceptable choices, such as always wearing dirty clothes, going naked, or eating off of dirty dishes.

``Why do we allow parents to hit a little child and not someone their own size?'' asked Nazario, a professor at the University of San Francisco Law School. ``Everyone in the state is protected from physical violence, so where do you draw the line? To take a child and spank his little butt until he starts crying, some people would define that as physical violence.'' ...

You can count on a law professor to say something really stupid. Why do we allow parents to dictate what a child eats for dinner and when to goto bed? We don't let them dictate that to someone their own size!

Doctors, social workers and others who believe a child has been abused are required by law to report it to authorities. Nazario said he and Lieber are still debating whether to treat slapping the same way, or simply to encourage those who witness it to report it. But in either case, said Lieber, the law ``would allow people who view a beating to say, `Excuse me, that's against the law.' ''

In the meantime, busybodies are stuck with saying, "Excuse me, there is a California legislator who thinks that ought to be against the law" or "Excuse me, there is a YWCA parenting class teacher who thinks that you ought to give your child more choices" or even "Excuse me, that's against the law in Sweden."

Experts in child psychology disagree over whether spanking is a legitimate or effective way for parents to discipline their children. Professor Robert Larzelere, who has studied child discipline for 30 years, said his research shows spanking is fine, as long as it's used sparingly and doesn't escalate to abuse.

``If it's used in a limited way,'' the Oklahoma State University professor said, ``it can be more effective than almost any other type of punishment.'' ...

As for Lieber's proposal, the professor said: ``I think this proposal is not just a step too far, it's a leap too far. At least from a scientific perspective there really isn't any research to support the idea that this would make things better for children.''

So why would someone want to pass a law against spanking, when the scientific research, common sense, and 1000s of years of experience favor spanking?

But Lieber is optimistic that lawmakers will find her proposal hard to resist. For the record, she does not have children and says she was not slapped as a child. But she does have a cat named Snoop, which her veterinarian told her never to hit.

``And if you never hit a cat,'' Lieber said, ``you should never hit a kid.''

Wow. There's the explanation. She wants to tell people how to rear kids based on a wacky cat analogy. I would say that she is giving female Democratic politicians from the San Francisco area a bad name, except that Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and others have already done that.

In my court case, I was forced to see Bret Johnson for a court-ordered custody evaluation. He is a gay man with no expertise or experience about rearing kids, as far as I could determine. His written recommended court orders included:

21. Corporal Punishment: Neither parent shall use, nor allow any other person to use, corporal punishment on the children.

When he testified in court, he admitted that this was not his opinion at all. He said that spanking with the hand on the butt is perfectly acceptable. His recommendations were just boilerplate orders that he copied from elsewhere. He refused to supply his source.

The judge didn't let me get to the bottom of the matter, and I was left to speculate as to how Bret Johnson could have such goofy opinions, and how the court could give them such high weight. Maybe the spanking order stems from Sally Lieber's vet saying to never hit a cat!

Yesterday, I would have said that no one over the age of four could be so stupid as to think that a vet's cat advice could be extrapolated into child rearing laws. Now I wonder whether there are any limits as to how stupid these child-rearing do-gooders can be.

Glenn Sacks

Glenn Sacks has a new blog. He has been writing and speaking for years on men's issues, and now you can get his latest stuff with a blog reader. He has organized some very good and effective campaigns.

Asking the victim for child support

News of the Weird:

Kimberly Baker, 22, sought child support in Warrensburg, Va., in October from the father of her daughter. However, when officials realized that the father, now 16, would have been 13 when the child was conceived, that made him a rape victim under state law, and thus, they arrested Baker.

There is a good chance the boy will have to pay mom support (aka child support) anyway. I don't think most states have any sort of exception for statutory rape victims.

Waiting for appeal

I haven't posted much about my case lately, because I am waiting for some action from the California appellate court. I was expecting to have heard a schedule for oral argument by now.

Meanwhile, I ran into this story about the California appeals court. A trial judge made an offhand comment that, "You can’t offend the kangaroos up there in kangaroo court." The appeals judge was offended by this, and wrote:

In making his "kangaroo court" remark, on the record in open court, Judge Saiers violated Canon 1 of the Code of Judicial Ethics, which provides as pertinent: "A JUDGE SHALL UPHOLD THE INTEGRITY AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE JUDICIARY. ...

Reading a little between the lines, it appears that Judge Saiers’s "kangaroo court" remark was provoked by his frustration not being able to dispose of a pending case in a way he thought sensible. It would appear that, in his eyes, this court was a naive, ivory-tower, obstructionist, oblivious to the real-world problems of trial courts faced with staggering caseloads.

The page also describes a Mississippi man who went to jail for ten days in 1997 for telling the judge he had a "kangaroo court". Also:

Miss. Bar v. Lumumba, 912 So. 2d 871, 875 (Miss. 2005). The attorney was suspended from practice for 6 months after telling a newspaper reporter that the judge had "the judicial temperament of a barbarian."

I am not an attorney, and as far as I know, there is no law or rule against me calling the judge a barbarian or the court a kangaroo court on this blog.

I am inclined to believe that the appeals court is a kangaroo court. I will be reporting here as soon as I have some first-hand experience.

Piling on Judith Regan

Cathy Young comments on Judith Regan's firing:

A few champions of embattled mothers, such as publishing hotshot Judith Regan (herself embroiled in a custody fight), openly advocated discirmination against fathers: "Women are simply better equipped biologically for parenting young children." ...

When the show was over and I was walking off the set past La Regan's desk, my gracious host told me once again that I was grievously wrong to think that father absence was often not the fault of fathers. "Then why is it that it's mothers who initiate divorces two-thirds of the time?" I asked. In response, Regan shrieked, "Because all those men are pigs! And I hope that some day, you marry a guy who chokes you and gives you a black eye!" (as she alleged her ex had done to her). ...

A friend who used to work for HarperCollins, not directly for Regan but with a few people who had direct contact with her, told me that she was famous for referring to the father of her children as "the sperm donor."

Regan is mainly famous for publishing trashy books; I didn't know that she was so anti-father.

TV's Judge Judy

I just tuned in TV's Judge Judy Sheindlin ranting on CNN Larry King Live against people dress improperly to court:

If for instance this was a custody case in the family court and someone came in saying "screw the justice system" on their t-shirt -- would that give me some indication that this is not a person I would entrust children with? Absolutely.

Be sure and suck up to her if you appear in her court. I do think that there are people in the family court system who are truly evil, and not deserving of any respect. I had a judge (Kelsay) who even admitted that he made a mess out of every child custody trial he had. He seemed determined to continue to make messes out of every case.

Supreme Court may hear child custody issue

Joanna Grossman writes:

In 2000, the Supreme Court handed down an important family law opinion, Troxel v. Granville. There, it held the State of Washington state's third-party visitation law unconstitutional as applied to the case before the Court. (I wrote at length about the case in a prior column.)

At the time, many predicted the demise of parallel laws in other states. But now, six years later, more state statutes have withstood challenge than have not, and courts are once again facing claims that grandparents have a right to seek visitation with a grandchild, even over the objection of the grandchild's parents.

Indeed, recently the highest courts of Pennsylvania and Utah upheld their states' laws with respect to grandparent visitation against a constitutional challenge based on Troxel.

The US Supreme Court said that parents have fundamental constitutional rights over the custody of their children, but a lot of states have gone ahead and awarded visitation to non-parents on the flimsiest of justifications. The Supreme Court may have to hear the same issue again.

Contested divorces can share parenting

A feminist blogger writes:

the proponents of shared parenting initiatives refuse to consider the following facts:

1. families who divorce amicably usually come up with their own custody arrangements;
2. many families who don't divorce amicably still end up settling on an agreed order;
3. the small percentage of contested cases that end up in the courts which would force undue burdens of proof on litigants to avoid shared parenting are families in which abuse has more often occurred. There are the very families for whom shared parenting is completely inappropriate.

The argument here is that we should have shared parenting for settled cases, but not adjudicated cases. The argument is repeated a lot, and rarely refuted, but it is totally idiotic.

Our legal system cannot have one favored outcome for settled cases, and another for adjudicated cases. It just cannot work that way. People settle cases based on an expectation on how they will be adjudicated. If the legal system worked smoothly, and a case had no facts in dispute, then the case would settle because no one would have any advantage to spending the time and money on litigation. If facts are in dispute, then court action might be needed to resolve those facts. But the court should never try to punish one side for failing to sign a settlement that the court would never order anyway.

Many feminists and even child custody evaluators take the position that shared parenting is fine if both parents agree, but if they fail to agree, then the court should order primary custody to the mom. The position is illogical. If shared parenting is good when the parents agree, then it is even better when they don't agree. The court should be issuing orders that approximate a desirable agreement, and not giving incentives for disagreement.

Are false abuse charges a common tactic?

Cathy Young writes in Reason magazine:

Child custody disputes are some of the bloodiest battlefields in the gender wars -- battlefields upon which allegations of spousal and child abuse are widely regarded as a nuclear weapon. But there are two opposite views of this problem. Fathers" advocates claim abuse allegations are routinely used to deny divorced fathers contact with their children and to poison children’s minds against their fathers, in what the activists and some psychologists call "parental alienation syndrome." Feminists argue that well-founded accusations of abuse are often dismissed and even turned against the accusing mothers.

She goes on to explain that the feminist poster girls for this cause have turned out to be frauds.

Judge Sloop gets fired

Orlando Sentinel reports:

The Florida Supreme Court today ordered Seminole County Judge John Sloop removed from the bench.

Sloop is the judge who ordered 11 people jailed because they went to the wrong courtroom by mistake. ...

Sloop blamed the ordeal, which happened in Sanford Dec. 3, 2004, on an undiagnosed case of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, something two psychiatrists testified that he truly did suffer from. ...

If his only mistake had been locking up those 11 people, the justices might have allowed him to keep his job, the court wrote.

But it also reviewed a video of a hearing a few weeks earlier at which Sloop launched into a long, loud abusive tirade against a woman who hadn't paid a $214 fine for 10 years.

Sloop testified that he hadn't lost his temper with the woman, that it was all an act designed to get her to pay, and it had worked.

I think that it is great to fire a judge for jailing 11 people like that for such a frivolous reason, but that last item is strange. I've seen judges go into abusive tirades over minor matters, and I cannot tell if the judge has lost his temper or not.

I get the impression that judges are sent to training seminars where they are taught to treat adults like misbehaving 4-year-olds. When a 4-year-old runs into the street, a parent will often fake anger in order to make an impression on the kid. Judges can similarly lecture someone over something more trivial than a parking ticket.

It is amusing that he used shrinks to make excuses for him. I wonder how often he accepted such lame excuses as a judge.

Boy arrested for unwrapping gifts early

South Carolina news:

A mother convinced Rock Hill police to arrest her 12-year-old son after he unwrapped a Christmas present early.

The boy's great-grandmother had specifically told him not to open his Nintendo Game Boy Advance, which she had wrapped and placed beneath the Christmas tree, according to a police report.

But on Sunday morning, she found the box of the popular handheld game console unwrapped and opened. When the boy's 27-year-old mother heard about the opened gift, she called police.

"He took it without permission. He wanted it. He just took it," said the 63-year-old great-grandmother.

Needless to say, there is no man in the picture. This only happens with single moms.

Getting a simple opposition brief

I just got my ex-wife's legal brief in opposition to my appeal. Most of it consists of just quoting the transcript from the family court judge, and just stating that the judge acted reasonably.

I expected her to do a little more legal research, and concoct some substantial legal arguments and cases on her side. She is a lawyer. Then I would look up the relevant legal issues and file a Reply Brief, as is my right.

Now I don't think that I'll even bother filing a Reply Brief. I doubt that anything that I would say now would make any difference. The appellate courts like to uphold what the lower courts are doing, so the odds are stacked against me. The appeal judges will decide on their own whether the family court judge acted reasonably, and then decide whether they want to do anything about it.

Getting a refund

I just got a $270 refund from the local family court.

I don't know why the court cannot simply send a bill for the amount owed, like every other business. The court had sent me a scary notice saying that I'd lose my appeal unless I paid a $325 deposit to cover the cost of preparing a 10-15 page transcript. The letter suggested that I was on my own to figure out how much it costs. I guess that it cost $55. A couple of months later, I get my refund.

Supplying a transcript to the ex

My ex-wife just called and said that she misplaced her clerk's transcript, and asked to borrow mine so that she can file her appeal brief against me! I said sure. I am a chump.

In reality, it wouldn't make much difference for me to refuse. She would just ask for an extension until she found it, or buy another copy, or just wing it. The legal issue is fairly narrow and the court is probably going to do whatever it wants to do no matter what she says.

Admissability of evidence

A feminist blogger writes:

Jennifer Hoult has a wonderful paper about the reasons why PAS is not admissable under either Frye or Daubert standards in a court of law. PAS needs to be kicked to the curb in all custody situations. It is useless, baseless and fraudulent.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is the idea that one parent can badmouth the other parent to a child and generate hostility in the child towards that other parent. It most commonly arises when the mom gets primary custody, and then doesn't want to be bothered with the dad's visitation schedule.

You would think that it would be obvious that PAS sometimes occurs, but these feminists want arguments about PAS banned in court. The above paper argues that PAS evidence should be inadmissible in family court.

I actually think that it is good that feminists are drawing attention to the admissibility of arguments like this. If PAS is inadmissibility then most of the other commonly-used family court evidence would be also. The family courts should have to consider admissibility of evidence just like any other court. It would be much better if it followed either Frye or Daubert standards.

A commenter writes:

You might be interested to do a little research on the author of that "wonderful paper". She won a $500,000 judgment against her father for episodes of child abuse for which the only evidence was her own "recovered memory". Recovered memories are, if anything, considerably more controversial an issue in court and are known to have destroyed many innocent families. Many of the "practitioners" of recovered memory therapy have been exposed as charlatans.

The issue gets interesting when one considers that Hoult shows many of the characteristics of an alienated child, albeit apparently not at the hands of a malicious mother, but one wonders maybe those of a dangerous therapist? Having dug a hole for herself and her father, could she be digging that hole further in order to justify it?

Furthermore, that "wonderful paper" is quite the most horrendous piece of scholarship being largely an extended ad hominem attack on Richard Gardner and containing very little which discusses the reality of the phenomenon of parental alienation. The scary part is that certain influential people are taking it at face value. The dangerous result is that it could easily be used to excuse malicious behavior in custody battles - quite the opposite of its claimed purpose.

Wow. No, I didn't know that. It sounds like Hoult has her own parental alienation issues. Her own personal parental alienation is at least as relevant as Richard Gardner committing suicide.

Yes, you are right, the recovered memory folks are charlatans. They'd be among the first to go, if the court started rejecting more quack experts.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters

I just read this book:

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters
by Dr. Meg Meeker

That’s right – and teen health expert Dr. Meg Meeker has the data and clinical experience to prove it. After more than twenty years of counseling girls, she knows that fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for their daughters’ lives. Now, she shows you how to strengthen -- or rebuild – your bond with your daughter, and use it to shape her life, and yours, for the better.

Some people have this funny idea that only sons need fathers. Daughters need them too.

Domestic violence studies

Dr. Gerald P. Koocher, American Psychological Association President, writes:

Several studies of domestic violence have suggested that males and females in relationships have an equal likelihood of acting out physical aggression, although differing in tactics and potential for causing injury (e.g., women assailants will more likely throw something, slap, kick, bite, or punch their partner, or hit them with an object, while males will more likely beat up their partners, and choke or strangle them). In addition, data show that that intimate partner violence rates among heterosexual and gay and lesbian teens do not differ significantly.

A lot of people refuse to believe this.

Born in the wrong era

A reader writes:

I have been following your blog for quite awhile now. I am a single man (33) who has never married and probably never will given our present cultural climate. The horror stories I could share with you about the decay and moral bankrupcy of my generation. I was born in the wrong era friend.

I am writing to let you know the pride I feel as a man seeing you make a stand, even with the deck so completely stacked against you. You inspire me. It is my prayer that you'll awake each morning renewed and with all clarity and virtue. May you continue to fight the good fight…

I stand beside you, as will the truth – and in agreement, know that you gain very Author of it.

Thanks, but I am not campaigning against marriage. A lot of people are happily married. I do think that marriage has a different meaning today from what it had 40 years ago, but under the law and in popular culture. Make sure you understand it before you get married.

A reader starts his own site

A reader has start his own angry dad site at givebackmyson.org. He says a regular blog like me is coming soon. Best of luck. The more voices the better.

British Airways treats men as child predators

The UK Daily Mail reports:

British Airways has been accused of treating all men passengers as potential sex offenders after it was revealed it has banned children from sitting next to male strangers - even if their parents are on the same flight.

The bizarre regulation came to light when a nine-year-old girl was moved from her seat next to a 76-year-old passenger and his wife on a flight from Malaga to London.

Instead her mother was told by a stewardess to take the seat next to retired journalist Michael Kemp and his wife Frances, and the girl was moved to the back of the plane.

Mrs Kemp had booked an aisle seat because a bad leg meant she needed extra space. But as the Airbus A320 filled up, she was asked to swap seats with her husband so that she, not he, would be sitting next to the girl.

Mrs Kemp politely declined, explaining to the stewardess that she had asked for an aisle seat to avoid discomfort during the three-hour flight.

But when Mr Kemp offered to move to the window seat so that the girl could sit between him and his wife, the stewardess said it would still breach the airline's child-welfare regulations.

This is bizarre. It is not just a matter of protecting unaccompanied girls. The plane had three adjacent seats, and the girl was going to sit between her mom and her stepdad! What would be the problem with that?

Apparently British Airways has a policy that says that it is better to seat the girl with strangers.