SCIENTIFIC SPANKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15685, 12 August 1914, Page 10

SCIENTIFIC SPANKING.

AMERICAN MOTHERS' SCHEME.

A movement has been started by a Mothers' Club over 100 strong, at Haverford, Pennelyvania, to nationalise and standardise the punishment of children. It is agreed thai the discipline of children can best be promoted by corporal punishment, judiciously devised and systematically executed, but it is complained that hitherto American mothers have generally failed to recognise that offences and their punishments should bear fixed or logical relationship to each other. these- Pennsylvania ' mothers have divided all offences into three groups, thoughtlessness, disobedience, and moral turpitude, and they aim at creating a (standard maximum and minimum punishment— form of spanking that really punishes without injury—duly modified according to age. It is agreed that all punishment shall be upon tho bare skin, and always in private, each parent being allowed Rome latitude in view of the fact that some children require more than others . " Scientific spanking" teems to bo the watchword of Haverford's club, and tho effort to work out a scale of punishments suitable to juvenile offend commands general sympathy in n . country, where, as regards native Americana, families are usually very small and frequently very spoiled. In this connection one notes with pride that Haverford mothers contrast the discipline of British mothers to the disadvantage of American juveniles, and they suggest that tho explanation is that British mothers realise that to sparo tho rod spoils the child