Our Rights As Parents?
Part Two
Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6
Chasten your son, seeing there is hope; and set not your heart on his destruction. Proverbs 19:18
For whom
Yahweh loves he chastens, And scourges every son whom he receives.
It is
for chastening that you endure; Yahweh deals with you as with sons; for
what son is there whom his father chastens not?
But if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers,
then are you bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave
them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of
spirits, and live?
Hebrews 12:6-9
Withhold not correction from the child; For if you beat him with the rod, he will not die Proverbs 23:13
What would the reaction to the above passages be if read by liberal parents or guardians? Would they be complied with? Or, would they be rejected as too harsh? Or perhaps rejected as too extreme? Perhaps it would be considered some form of cruel and unusual punishment? What do you believe as someone who follows the directives of Father Yahweh? Would you comply? Or, would you also reject these passages as too extreme and unnecessary? We should realize the mindset apparent among the peoples of the various nations! Let's view some statistics from previous posts here at Truth On The Net Dot Com!
SPANKING: Another Form of Abuse?
United States Statutes Pertaining to Spanking
Spanking is no longer encouraged as a form of discipline! And, considering the behavior of society's youth, this is more than obvious! Societies are now raising weak coddled children! They have no deterrent to guide them away from criminal activity! They are no longer punished for bad/evil behavior! They seemingly get away with everything, because the parents/guardians refuse to correct them! What about our so-called coddled society? Read the following!
A Nation of
Wimps
By: Hara Estroff Marano
Summary: Parents
are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children.
However, parental hyper-concern has the net effect of making kids more fragile;
that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.
Maybe it's the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet,
cruising along the dirt path... at three miles an hour. On his tricycle.
Or perhaps it's today's playground, all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used
to skin their knees. And... wait a minute... those aren't little kids playing.
Their mommies -- and especially their daddies -- are in there with them,
co-playing or play-by-play coaching.
Few take it half-easy on the perimeter
benches, as parents used to do, letting the kids figure things out for
themselves.
Then there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now send
their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably, parents now
worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children.
Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling through the
sheaf of reports certifying the educational "accommodations" he was required to
make for many of his history students, he was struck by the exhaustive,
well-written -- and obviously costly -- one on behalf of a girl who was already
proving among the most competent of his ninth-graders. "She's somewhat
neurotic," he confides, "but she is bright, organized and conscientious -- the
type who'd get to school to turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of
stomach flu." He finally found the disability he was to make allowances for:
difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old "couldn't see the big
picture." That cleverly devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big
picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed, especially the big one
at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT.
Behold the wholly
sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids
need to feel badly sometimes,"
says child
psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University.
"We learn through
experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to
cope."
Messing up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although
error and experimentation are the true mothers of success,
parents are taking
pains to remove failure from the equation.
"Life is planned out for us," says Elise Kramer, a Cornell University junior.
"But we don't know what to want." As Elkind puts it,
"Parents and
schools are no longer geared toward child development, they're geared to
academic achievement."
No one doubts that there are significant economic forces pushing parents to
invest so heavily in their children's outcome from an early age. But taking all
the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially
while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about
180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their
creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes
them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety.
In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of
accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about
perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill. These turn
out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of 21st-century youth.
Whether we want to
or not, we're on our way to creating a nation of wimps.
Not only are the children coddled from trial and error, they are also removed from any responsibility whatsoever! However, there are those who still believe the parents are responsible for the acts of their children. Until the age of accountability (twenty years old) when the child becomes an adult! In some places they can vote and legally drink at the age of 18.
Parental
Responsibility Laws
Susan and Anthony Provenzino of St. Clair Shores, MI, knew their 16-year-old
son, Alex, was troubled. His first arrest occurred in May 1995, and in the year
that followed, he continued his delinquent behavior by committing burglary,
drinking alcohol, and using and selling marijuana.
Alex was difficult
at home as well, verbally abusing his parents and once attacking his father with
a golf club.
Although the Provenzinos were disturbed by Alex's behavior, they supported his
release from juvenile custody during the fall of 1995, fearing he would be
mistreated in the youth facility where he was detained -- a facility where
juveniles charged with more violent crimes were housed.
It is unlikely
that the Provenzinos expected to be the first parents tried and convicted of
violating a 2-year-old St. Clair Shores ordinance that places an
affirmative responsibility on parents to ". . . exercise reasonable control over
their children."
On May 5, 1996, however, after a jury deliberated only 15 minutes, the
Provenzinos
were convicted of
violating the parental accountability ordinance.
They were each
fined $100 and ordered to pay an additional $1,000 in court fees.
The Provenzino case brought national attention to a growing trend at both State
and local levels to combat youth crime:
the enactment of
parental responsibility laws imposing liability on parents for the delinquent
behavior of their children.
Caught somewhere between prevention and punishment for both children and
parents,
these laws attempt
to involve parents in the lives of their children by holding them civilly and/or
criminally liable for their children's actions.
Penalties for violation of these laws include increased participation by parents
in juvenile proceedings; financial responsibility for restitution payments and
court costs; financial responsibility for detention, treatment, and supervisory
costs; participation in treatment, counseling, or other diversion programs;
and criminal
responsibility and possible jail time for parents found negligent in their
supervision.
Although the effectiveness of these laws has not been evaluated in a systematic
way, the notion of parental responsibility has attracted broad support.
Various types of
legislation mandating a minimum level of parental responsibility have been a
part of this Nation's history since its inception.
The objective of these laws is to impose affirmative duties on parents to
provide necessities for the youth in their custody and to ensure they do not
abuse or abandon their children. According to P. Thomas Mason, in his article
"Child Abuse and Neglect," States have established criminal sanctions against
parents who have abused, severely neglected, or abandoned their children since
the early years of American history. Other related efforts to establish a
minimum standard of parenting include compulsory school attendance laws and
criminal nonsupport laws...
While many States
have embraced the idea of holding parents responsible for the actions of their
children -- at least 36 States have mandated some type of responsibility
provision beyond civil liability for parents or guardians of delinquent children
--
Since the inception of America, parental responsibility has been advocated by legislators. Why? And, where do you suppose this concept originated? Directly from the Bible! When you get married and decide to have children, you are responsible for their actions until the age of accountability!
The Jews
therefore did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and had
received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his
sight,
and asked them, saying, Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How
then does he now see?
His parents answered and said, We know that this is our son, and that he
was born blind:
but how he now sees, we know not; or who opened his eyes, we know not:
ask him; he is of age; he shall
speak for himself.
John 9:18-21
Yes, this individual was "of age" so he could speak for himself.
If a man has a stubborn and
rebellious son who will not listen to his father's voice, or his mother's voice;
even though they discipline him, he will not listen to them;
then his father and his mother shall lay hold on him and bring him out to
the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place;
and they shall say to the elders of his city, This son of ours is stubborn
and rebellious; he will not listen to
our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, and he shall die.
So you shall put away the evil from among you, that all Israel shall hear, and
fear.
Deuteronomy
21:18-21
Here the parents tried to discipline their child! The child refused to listen and receive the correction! Rejecting the discipline, the child had to be taken to the authorities of the time, (The Elders). They determined he had committed evil in refusing the parental discipline imposed, and decreed/judged him worthy of death! Severe? perhaps! However, it would serve as a deterrent for others in the camp, and perhaps future generations! Children should obey their parents!
Children, obey the parents in all things, for this is pleasing to Yahweh. Colossians 3:20
Read the following legislation concerning parental responsibility in one state!
California's Statute Prevails Against Constitutional Challenge
California's law
imposing criminal parental responsibility is one of the most stringent in the
Nation.
Enacted in 1988 as part of the Street Terrorism and Prevention Act, the law
amended the State's CDM law by making it a crime when parents or guardians do
not " exercise reasonable care, supervision, protection, and control" over their
children.
One case from the Los Angeles area brought this provision before the State
supreme court. In 1989, Gloria Williams was the first woman to be charged under
the amended CDM statute. Williams' then-12-year-old son was suspected of having
participated in a gang rape of a young girl. When police visited Williams' home,
they found " . . . family photo albums [containing] pictures of the 37-year-old
Williams posing with gang members known as 'Crips,'" and " pictures of her
4-year-old son pointing a pistol at the camera [and] spray-painted graffiti
adorning the bedroom walls of the modest stucco house of Williams and her three
children."90 The investigating detective, after searching the house, was quoted
as saying,
"I couldn't
believe my eyes. In all my 20 years on the police force, I have never seen
anything like this. It was obvious that the mother was just as much part of the
problem because she condoned this activity."
When it was shown that Gloria Williams had participated in a parenting course 2
months earlier, however, a local prosecutor indicated that it would violate the
spirit of the law to try her because she had indeed taken steps to control her
children by participating in parent education. As a result, the case against
Williams was dropped.
On behalf of Ms. Williams, Gary Williams, a professor of law at Loyola
University Law School in Los Angeles, partnered with the
ACLU
in filing a taxpayers' lawsuit in California superior court. The plaintiff's
contention was that
the parental
responsibility law was impermissibly vague and infringed upon the established
right to privacy in family matters.
Williams contended that the implementation of the law would be a waste of
taxpayer funds.
Through a series
of judgments and appeals, the Supreme Court of California upheld the language of
the legislation, finding that the statute set a reasonable standard for parents
who are making attempts to guide and control their children and that a
statutorily defined notion of perfect parenting would be both inflexible and
impractical.
Notice the opposition by the ACLU here! The ACLU opposes many other disciplines, i.e. laws against homosexuality. By filing lawsuits and class actions, they jam up the courts! Their aim is to change the laws opposing their agendas. By constantly filing legal briefs, they coagulate the legal system. Frivolous in nature, they wear away the administrators of the legal system, causing a breakdown by erosion. The water torture method employed by the ACLU eventually takes its toll! The court becomes weary of their dripping legal briefs! So, things are changed just to get rid of them! Parents are exonerated of any responsibility in regard to child upbringing! You as parents have legal rights according the the Constitution, but, for how long?
The Family and the
Constitution
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Wagner
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Copyright (c) 1994 First Things 45 (August/September 1994)
The family occupies a precarious
position in the liberal democracies of today.
It still exists; it sometime flourishes; mainstream public policy experts are
rediscovering its importance-but at the same time, it is
under ideological assault,
sometimes in the name of individualism, sometimes in the name of an ill-defined
"community" whose agent is, naturally, the state. In the face of this assault,
defenders of the family find that there is, in fact, an imperfect fit between
the individualism that underlies contemporary moral discussion, and the
quintessentially interpersonal nature of the family.
We did not get into this predicament by
accident.
Mary Ann Glendon, in The Transformation of Family Law,
identifies the ideological wellspring of
the present assault on the family:
To the French revolutionaries, the old feudal statuses, the Ch--ch, the guilds,
and even some aspects of family organization
were seen both as oppressive to
individuals and as threats
to the nation-state. . . . [T]he revolutionary leaders aimed at suppression of
the corps intermediares of the old regime under the slogan "There are no rights
except those of individuals and the State."
While we in the United States pride ourselves on having avoided in our own
revolution the ideological and sanguinary excess of France's, it may well be
that the view of family described by Professor Glendon
crept into American practice, wearing at
first the reassuring mask of elite charity.
I
In the late nineteenth century, industrialization and the emergence of
unprecedented concentrations of the poor in America's cities led to new forms of
state activity. One that particularly concerns the family is the rise of what
Philip Rieff
first called the "therapeutic state."
This is the name given to what happens when the casework method of social
philanthropy is linked to the coercive power of government.
To put it more
concretely: when a rich person, or his agent, shows up at a poor person's front
door and offers assistance that is supposedly tailored to that poor person's
particular needs, the poor person is free to choose a wide variety of responses,
ranging from grateful acceptance to slamming the door.
But when the agent
at the door represents not a private party but the state, backed up by
legislation and enforcement power, the poor person's range of options is
extremely limited, and his dignity and autonomy are violated.
The state will
proceed to "help" him in the way that it, not he, thinks best.
Backed by the "Enforcement Power", Options become limited! If the "STATE" determines that you as a parent/guardian have violated any laws/ordinances, you will be implicated! And, the ACLU is in the constant process of eroding away the rights of parents! Soon the rights of all citizens will be subject to question! What can we do? Plenty!
Stay right here for part three!
PART ONE
Yours in Yahshua, Hawke
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