Such things as: murder, torture, starving someone, psychological abuse, rape, stealing. Things that most people would agree they don't want done to them or to those they love. Seems like these kinds of things are a good basis for a universal moral code.
Oh, I would agree with any of the above list that includes obvious physical...and most obvious emotional or mental...harm. That, however, ends up being a bit squishy, that 'emotional and mental' harm bit.
A story: I have only been spanked twice in my entire life. Both times the spanking was severe enough to make it difficult for me to sit for a day or so. I remember them vividly. Now today my parents may well have been accused of child abuse. Certainly it would have been looked on with severe disaproval...TODAY...though sixty years ago my folks would have been viewed as incredibly 'soft' because I was only spanked twice.
the first time I was spanked, my mother did it. We were in the front yard and she told me to be careful not to go into the street, but I was dancing around and full of ...something...and even after she told me two or three times, I ran into the street to 'show' her that I could do what I wanted. The neighbor's dog, a very large mastiff, ran after me, grabbed me and yanked me back to the curb, quite literally saving my life. I had danced in front of a car. After hugging me, praising the dog, making sure that I was OK and not even scraped, she turned me over her knee and spanked me. hard. She wanted me to KNOW that doing something that stupid...ignoring her and deliberately ignoring her when she told me something as important as 'don't run in front of oncoming cars' that doing so would result in painful consequences, even if the car missed me.
Trust me, I did NOT forget that lesson.
The second time was when my father told me to do something and I said "I don't have to!" (I'd heard my friend yell that to her mother and get away with it).
Wrong answer. I did have to. Mind you, I was ALWAYS allowed to try to talk him out of an 'order,' and if I was logical enough, he sometimes compromised. However, I never showed him..or Mom...that level of disrespect again.
Both incidents were before I was ten. Believe me, I have never run into the road without looking for cars first, and when my father speaks to me, I pay attention, even (or especially) now, when he is 94 and doesn't always remember the topic at hand.
So, I was spanked. Neither spanking did me harm, but were, I sincerely believe, the appropriate actions to take at the time. Was I done emotional or psychological harm? No. In fact, I think that a problem that I was developing was short circuited very quickly....and I was a bunch happier later than the friend who had gotten away with telling her mother that she 'didn't have to."
Some one else, with some other philosophical belief system, might have handled things differently, and been successful. That's fine...but that doesn't mean that the way my parents handled this was 'harmful' to me or anybody else.
So...does someone who has a different idea of child-raising have the right to enforce that idea on someone who has a different one?
