If you take the “children should pay for the sins of their parents” thing to its logical conclusion, you get pure evil like this video of Kate O’Beirne saying we should kill school programs to feed poor children on the grounds that parents who can’t feed their own kids are bad parents.  ... Malnourished children are more likely to suffer from developmental problems, which means they are more likely to suffer in school, suffer in employment, and make poor decisions that could affect everyone.

But they allow completely-mediocre-at-best people like Kate O’Beirne to enjoy feeling like smashing successes, and isn’t flattering the unimpressive worth the price?

[/bitter sarcasm]

The toys are a huge part of why kids even want to eat at McDonald’s. My 5-year-old has had fast food maybe five or six times in his life - at airports, on road trips, or when something like a doctor’s appt. caused him to miss lunch at school and I wasn’t prepared and needed some way to feed him on the way back to preschool - and he’s never had it just cause he whined his way into the drive thru line - but he talks about it A LOT. And it’s always about the toys, never the food. If they didn’t have those toys, I suspect it would almost never come up.

I also believe that it’s just a bad idea to starve children, beyond the moral arguments against it.  Malnourished children are more likely to suffer from developmental problems, which means they are more likely to suffer in school, suffer in employment, and make poor decisions that could affect everyone.

But c’mon, if we care for all children, then the genes of the good/smart parents will be overtaken by the genes of the bad/dumb parents.  And then I would lose the procreation game.

I mean, shouldn’t I want my imaginary super superior children to have every advantage including competing against kids who haven’t had breakfast or are eating crap and watching crap and maybe don’t get much interaction with family members and don’t have a lot of books in the house?

I think some people hate immigrants and want to make sure their children aren’t allowed to go to college.  Not because they’re taking our jobs at McDonalds, but because they might just take our jobs at IndustroCorp.  The whole “they need to work their way up” business is just bullshit.  They want them to work hard and *not* make it.

Google Initiative media, Lucy Hughes and “The Nag Factor”

I see the bitch is with CBS radio now.

Not only should they get rid of subsidized school lunches, but there should be government-paid child molesters in every playground in the country, because only bad parents would fail to teach their kids how to avoid predators. Oh, and pop-up spiked bollards at intersections, because only bad drivers would fail to see and avoid them. That way we could weed the gene pool real quick.

One of the big lessons of the last half of the 20th century was not to stack the deck against people trying to make decisions. Why airline pilots have checklists, why doctors write on the limb to be operated with a sharpie before going into the OR. Why your keyboard cable has a different configuration from your power cable. Anyone why claims not to understand this idea is either an entitled jerkwad or truly too stupid to live.

Oh, and another reason for people to get sucked into McD’s and other fast food: the habitrails. For the price of a cup of coffee and some kid item your offspring can play for a couple hours in a mostly-safe, mostly-clean, well-lighted, heated/airconditioned two-story indoor jungle gym. That’s the kind of infrastructure that very few communities can provide from the public purse.

I would assume this Kate O’Beirne doesn’t think children of bad parents should seriously starve, but instead thinks they should be taken away from their parents and given to the nice middle-class foster parents who are totally waiting to adopt them. She probably really does think that, without wanting to think through the problems with that plan.

For the price of a cup of coffee and some kid item your offspring can play for a couple hours in a mostly-safe, mostly-clean, well-lighted, heated/airconditioned two-story indoor jungle gym. That’s the kind of infrastructure that very few communities can provide from the public purse.

I can’t believe no one has started a business that has those with healthier food, or just a small fee to get in and bring your own snacks, or something like that. Seems like it might be a hit, at least in the parts of the country where the weather is bad enough to make outdoor play difficult or impossible for large parts of the year.

The kid you saw howling for cheeeeese! is a product of bad parenting.  She wouldn’t be doing that if it hadn’t paid off for her in the past.  I suppose you might have seen her first try, but it’s unlikely.  Usually the first time a kid tries something like that (having seen it on TV or seen some other kid doing it) the parents’ response is not to hunker down and try to ignore it.  They are shocked and horrified and want more than anything to get their kid out of there so they can try to deal with it in private.  Because you know, I’m sure, what happens if a parent says anything angry or correctional to a child in public.  Suddenly everyone is the kid’s parent.  And the parent’s parent.

My guess is that mom and dad got tired of it and are trying to teach her gently not to do it.  Good luck to them.

Aaaaaand phylosopher still hasn’t grasped why it’s a bad idea (or at least tasteless) to use the word “bitch” pejoratively at a feminist blog. Ferchrissake. Are you fucking serious, phyl?

Even if children’s diet is the parent’s responsibility, why can’t we make it easier for the parenys by not making junk ubiquitous in our children’s lives?  My kids’ school fundraised by letting them buy “treats” after lunch every Friday.  I didn’t want them to eat the junk, and didn’t have the spare money, so every Friday was a battle over “why does everybody but me get it”  and “why are you so mean and Suzie’s mom is so nice?”  Sure, I got to exercise my parental responsibility, but some help from the school sure would have been welcome.  Same with junkfood from McDonald’s and everywhere else - once in awhile it’s fun to have a treat, but it’s everywhere, all the time, and it’s a constant battle to keep kids from subsisting on non-stop junk.  Let’s help the responsible, and irresponsible, and just plain tired and broke, parents out a little bit!

What makes you think she hasn’t grasped that?  I imagine she fully understands, but she probably doesn’t think the arguments against using “bitch” on the goddamn internet are that persuasive.  I certainly don’t.

@11: So go use it on the entire rest of the goddamn Internet. If you honestly do not see why people who deliberately form and congregate in spaces dedicated to fighting misogyny might not particularly enjoy hearing misogynistic language, then you are way, way too stupid to be a part of grown-up discussions.

Also, that implication that the Internet is a thing of no importance and the things that happen on it are not “real”: Are you stupid, or do you just think we are? In case you hadn’t noticed, kind of the biggest news story going on at the moment is that governments have suddenly started pretending they think rape is bad because of things people put on the Internet.

—————

Am I feeding a troll? I can’t recall this particular poster; I kind of just answered it because it was cathartic to do so.

I can’t believe no one has started a business that has those with healthier food

The profit margins are smaller.

If McDonald’s is banned from giving toys away with meals, they’ll just start giving toys away just because.  If it makes sense financially, they’ll do it.  And if they get told they can’t give away free toys, they’ll charge 49 cents for them.  And parents and children will still come, still eat the crappy food, and still get toys.  In fact, they’ll probably buy more toys and the Golden Arches will become just another crappy toy store.  And that will make everyone feel better, since the Chinese plastic factories will get more money and exploit more workers.  Win win!

I disagree, Older.  The idea that a parent who is imperfect = a bad parent is wrong, to begin with.  Also, children are separate human beings, just like adults, but smaller and with less context.  The notion that all their behavior is adaptable doesn’t really work for me.  Take my sister and me, for instance—-same parents, only two years apart in age.  On the whole, I was a lovely child who barely ever threw tantrums.  My sister was a screaming brat.  There is give in the system.  The idea that children are blank slates is one that science has carefully disproved.

My sister grew up to be a lovely woman who isn’t particularly ill-tempered, by the way.  You can never tell.

An early lesson in the power of junk food on kids:

Once I was in a supermarket line, and behind me was a woman with a 2-year-old son perched in the cart.

He pointed at my big bag of tortilla chips and said, “I want that.”

“You shouldn’t,” I told him. “It’s not good for you.”

“It’s yummy,” he said.

“I know. And my mommy isn’t around to stop me from eating it. But yours is.”

The kid thought this over a second, turned to his mother and said, “I wanna go with this guy.”

For someone who probably started talking last week or so, he sure was articulate.

Hell, I think advertising aimed at children should be outlawed, period.  Studies have shown that kids below a certain age are incapable of understanding that statements can have an agenda behind them—that when Ronald McDonald says his hamburgers are delicious, he’s probably saying it because he wants you to buy his hamburgers.  Advertising to kids below the age of about six is taking advantage of people who don’t have the mental equipment to understand that advertisements aren’t factual.  (Of course, you could argue that plenty of adults never develop that mental equipment either.)

One of the most devastating single attacks on the American diet was McDonald’s decision, in the 1970s, to deliberately target kids.  That’s when they introduced the Happy Meals, the indoor playgrounds, and the McDonaldLand characters, and other fast-food chains followed suit.  McDonald’s worked very hard to encourage kids to nag their parents into eating at McDonalds, while pushing the chain to parents as a safe, responsible (and convenient and cheap) place to take their kids.  Within a generation, fast food went from an occasional indulgence for teenagers and adults to a staple of the American diet from earliest childhood.

Plus they ripped off the McDonaldLand characters from Sid and Marty Krofft and never paid them, so screw them.

That’s the thing—-junk food is designed to be the sort of thing that people compulsively eat.  They don’t make it too flavorful, so that you keep shoveling it in hopes of satisfaction.  They stuff it with salt so you drink more soda.  It’s heavy on nutrients that we evolved a compulsion to stuff in our faces—-fat and sugar.  Children are especially susceptible.

Geogami @ 7: At least once a week we take our daughter to Leapin’ Lizards, which is a double warehouse full of inflatable jumping gyms and slides. Five bucks per kid, nothing for grownups, most of whom set their kids free and read trashy novels on benches. Ours is only two so one of us jumps and slides with her. They serve snacks, which for snacks at a kids’ place aren’t half unhealthy, tho they’re really expensive. Her little buddy Chloe’s mom just brings snacks and nobody says boo. It’s ungodly packed on wet weekend afternoons: just a license to print money.

With the apple sllices and such, they are actually getting a bit better. And of course much of the legislation thus far isn’t particularly onerous. Getting under 600 calories for a kid’s meal, for example, just ain’t that hard. (Although it makes it harder for those parents who think they’re finding maximal calories for their kids by going to a fast food place.)

Ripping of the McDonaldland characters was the least of the cruel things that the McDonalds corporation ever did. My favorite is, after buying out the franchise rights from the original McDonalds’ McDonald’s, they opened up a McDonald’s across the street from the original and drove the McDonalds brothers out of business.

This particular subject pisses me off royally. Complete fucking strangers have approached me in public and commented on what my child is eating and even sought to reproach her right in front of me for her food choices. They don’t take too kindly to being told that if they’re so concerned about my child maybe they can buy her lunch next time. *That* they would never do. One guy even told me that “it wasn’t his job to feed my kid.” Oh, but it’s his job to oversee her diet? Please. No one, not once, has ever come up to my husband in public and said one goddamn word to him about our child—on any subject. Go figure. I’ve had people comment on her clothes, shoes, hair, general demeanor, eating habits, and even the toys she wants.

Either people care all the way about the children or they should just admit they don’t care at all. This isn’t about the children in my opinion, just like Amanda said. The constant criticism of parenting can serve many purposes, one of which is to control women. I know men are parents too, but since women are also seen as being responsible for their husbands/ boyfriends/ partners, they are also seen as the ultimate reason for any “bad parenting.” If dad is a bad parent it’s because mom didn’t show him how to do it properly. It’s sickening.

They used to treat marketing to children seriously:

Linus the Lionhearted

Linus the Lionhearted was an animated cartoon featuring a main character of the same name. The character was created in 1960 by the Ed Graham advertising agency, originally as a series of ads for General Foods’ Post Cereals. At first, Linus was the spokesman for the short-lived Post cereal “Heart of Oats” (a Cheerios imitation). Eventually, the lion was redesigned and reintroduced in 1963 to sell Crispy Critters, which featured Linus on the box. The ads were so popular that a television series was created in 1964 (with General Foods as sponsor) and ran on the CBS network until 1966, then reruns [in color] aired on ABC from 1966, until it was cancelled three years later. A coloring book was published which detailed the adventures of So-Hi going on a scavenger hunt in order to break a curse on a two-headed bird, who is then transformed into a boy due to So-Hi’s dedication.

In addition to Linus, a rather good-natured “King of the Beasts” who ruled from his personal barber’s chair and voiced by Sheldon Leonard, there were other features as well, all based on characters representing other popular Post cereals (Sugar Crisp, Alpha-Bits, Rice Krinkles, Post Toasties, etc.). The best-known of these was Sugar Bear, who sounded like Bing Crosby and was voiced by actor Gerry Matthews. There was also a postman named Lovable Truly, a young Asian boy named So Hi, and Rory Raccoon.

A long-play record album was also released as a premium in the year of the show’s debut featuring the characters (voiced by the same stars as the animated cartoon) singing with re-written lyrics familiar songs such as “Jimmy Cracked Corn.”
Contents

Vocal talent

The show was perhaps best noted for its abundance of well-known vocal talent. In addition to Leonard, Carl Reiner voiced several characters, most notably Linus’ friend Billy Bird; Ruth Buzzi voiced an old woman who’d befriended Lovable Truly, as well as Sugar Bear’s sometime nemesis, Granny Goodwitch; and veteran Bob McFadden voiced So Hi, Rory and Lovable Truly. Jonathan Winters also made a guest appearance, as did Jerry Stiller and his wife Anne Meara.

Cancellation

The FCC made a ruling in 1969 that forbade children’s show characters from appearing in advertisements on the same program and ABC was forced to cancel the program.

Opening of Linus the Lionhearted

Geogami, they have.  Near me, there is both a “Jump Central for little kids,” and a private gym that has kid night aka open gym - a bit older crowd, but a great place for pre-teens to hang out.  In a neighboring ‘burb, there is also a park district with a rock climbing wall, but this is pretty pricey, IMO.

Aaaaaand phylosopher still hasn’t grasped why it’s a bad idea (or at least tasteless) to use the word “bitch” pejoratively at a feminist blog. Ferchrissake. Are you fucking serious, phyl?
Comment #9: kristin on 12/07 at 09:56 PM

Well Kristin, I regard the usage rules for the b-word similar to usage rules for the n-word.  But if you prefer - try arrogant, over-credentialed money grubbing professional psychologist prostitute (in the non-sexual sense of that word.) Add in asshole who should be sentenced to a few years alone in bondage with six kids under the age of four (robotic facsimiles preferred) who have been fed large doses of red dye and sugar and who are programmed to want more.more. more from Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

If you ever get a chance, watch the clip of her in “The Corporation.”  Even your uber pc reflex would be seriously challenged.

“non-sexual prostitutes.”

Because the perjorative term of prostitute has nothing to do with sex at all. Nope, no-siree. Why, I’m prostituting myself for a paycheck right now by writing database code.

Yep, utterly not grasping it. Quelle fucking suprise.

I disagree, Older.  The idea that a parent who is imperfect = a bad parent is wrong, to begin with.  Also, children are separate human beings, just like adults, but smaller and with less context.  The notion that all their behavior is adaptable doesn’t really work for me.

THANK YOU. Yeah, it just couldn’t be that some children are difficult (or that even mild, well-parented children have difficult moments) could it? It has to be Bad Parenting. Older can tell this b/c of hir magic Bad Parenting Goggles, apparently.

My daughter is 6 and delightful 98% of the time. We strive to model respectful communication with her and set limits in firm, compassionate ways. We have never shown her that tantruming will get her what she wants, and her teachers have all gushed over what a joy she is. Everyone likes her. But every once in a while she throws an absolutely appalling howler, and the only thing we can do is ride it out—terribly embarrassing in public, where doubtless plenty of people are using their Bad Parenting Goggles to analyze the incident.

Interestingly, most of her tantrums happen when she has low blood sugar, which seems to me like a completely plausible explanation for a kid screaming about cheese!

I know this isn’t exactly a ground-breaking observation, but I would bet that the Venn diagram for the “save the fetus” people has a lot of overlap with the “starve the children” circle. It is strange how a fetus is a total seperate entity from the mother, while a child old enough to throw a tantrum is 100% a reflection of his/her parents (mostly mother) and punishing said child is no different than punishing the parent.

@7: There are indoor play grounds that are not McDonalds-affiliated. The problem is that they aren’t as ubiquitous, and since McDonalds is such a big company they can afford to make it free (or free with a purchase that could be as cheap as a dollar). Indoor playgrounds that are just playgrounds are either significantly more expensive, kind of crappy, or both. (My sister got a free trial pass to an independent, locally-owned one, and while she thought it was a great idea in theory, her kids did not have any fun because every time they tried to play with something, the kids of the family that owned the place threw a fit.  You don’t have that problem at McDonalds.)  Basically, the same reason more people don’t take their kids to them is the same reason that more people don’t take their kids to independent restaurants that serve good food: it’s more expensive and less convenient.  I know my nieces would have a serious blast at a place like the one described @20, but to get them to one would mean an hour drive, and ten bucks a visit would price it out of the range of something they can afford to do often. (We totally should do it with them sometime, but it would be a special occasion, not a regularly occurring event.)

Cynical romantic, depends on your definition of troll.  I’m as feminist as anyone else, but I’m not nice about it.  I find people who police vocabulary on blogs, feminist or otherwise, because they believe such words are “misogynist” and expect everyone to conform to that belief to be dreadfully useless and quite frankly, blind to their privilege.  If “bitch” is your experience of what misogyny is, count your blessings.

Then again, I have no room to talk, since I am definitely derailing this thread just as much as anyone who whines about the use of “bitch” does.

O’Beirne does in fact do speeches about the “sanctity of life”, which apparently actual children do not have.

Of course “bitch” is a misogynist term.  It’s attacking someone on the grounds that she’s female, not because of what she did.  The implication—-that it’s bad for someone to violate gender norms and adopt a level of aggression normal in men—-is sexist to its core.  You can call someone by a term that doesn’t imply her first sin was having a vagina.

I simply disagree, but your blog, your rules.

arrogant, over-credentialed money grubbing professional psychologist <s>prostitute</s> sellout

  or bitch

skipping over the whole “what is appropriate/offensive” debate which is simple more interesting? more informative? more insulting? bitch is a petty bland insult for a lot of reasons. so with at least a quarter-million words at our disposal, how about we all reach for that loquacious higher bar and stop limiting our take-downs to one-word, single syllable been there, done that obscenities that weren’t that edgy when Carlin first informed us we couldn’t say them on T.V.

On the whole, I was a lovely child who barely ever threw tantrums.  My sister was a screaming brat.

You don’t say; me too! ;p

But yeah, lying aside, my dad will never be convinced that nurture trumps nature purely thanks to the experience of raising me and my siblings. We were all close in age, same sex, same upbringing—wildly different people. And that’s not even getting into variations in neurobiology, which fall everywhere from “shy” to “if you try to enforce that particular rule, she will dig in her heels with the tenacity of a wolverine and die rather than let go.” One sister would be all “I don’t like that decision, but I will abide by it” and the other would be like “I HOPE YOU DIE IN THE FIRES OF HELL YOU OPPRESSOR!” and chain herself to whatever was jut forbidden.

If, at any point, getting fast food had become the latter sibling’s last-stand-hill-to-die-on she damn well would have tried her level best to die on it. Much cleverer not to let that kind of thing become an appealing option in the first place, even via legislation, rather than spark a thousand preventable parent-on-child deathmatches.

O’Beirne does in fact do speeches about the “sanctity of life”, which apparently actual children do not have.

Abortions ruin everything. Selfish ladies! Get the little buggers out in the open, where everyone can enjoy the baby-killing together.

Jerome, Bagelsan was kind enough to get on the killing-children thing just one comment before you. *Do* try to keep up darling.

I have 6 year old fraternal twins who were raised in about as similar of an environment in every way as you can get. They are as different as night and day. One is wonderful 98% of the time and then every once in a while just explodes in a shit fit of mass proportions. The other hardly ever tantrums but can be a constant whiner and nagger. We go to McDonalds a few times a year in a pinch, and he only wants the toy and picks at he food. Every time we pass he golden arches he starts in, to where the other one goes, “let’s hurry past so (brother) won’t start nagging.”

People who judge people as bad parents because the witness a public tantrum usually are either childless or so far removed from their parenting days that they have forgotten that this happens to everybody.

Because if you make it all about parenting skills, you’re basically arguing that children who have the misfortune of having bad parents deserve to suffer.

Which part of “having an unhealthy diet” causes the child to “suffer”?  I do lots of unhealthy things that I enjoy, including some things my parents taught me to do as a kid.  As long as children aren’t suffering, since when is it any of our business how other people choose to raise their kids?

I’m open to the idea that it’s unethical for McDonald’s et al. to market to parents through their kids, but how to spend the food budget remains the parents’ decision. 

[Another thing: banning the inclusion of a “free” toy in a Happy Meal isn’t going to affect behavior in the slightest.  The price of the toy has, of course, already been factored into the price of the meal.  All McDonald’s has to do to circumvent the law is to list the toys for sale separately.  So, you can buy a burger ($1), a soda ($1) and a toy (25 cents) all separately for $2.25, or you can buy a discount-package Happy Meal for $1.99, (95 cents for the burger, 95 cents for the soda, 9 cents for the toy).]

well YOU want to regulate my baby killing, mars bar wingnut.

The point of the law is not to police the behavior of parents; the point is to put a rein on rampant corporate advertising to and manipulation of children. The aim is at McDonald’s and how it markets its crappy food, not to try to tell parents what to feed their children.

Damn, what’s with all the troll-assholes out tonight?  JB, scumby, stubbles are all inhabitants of the douchebag set.

It’s finals week.

Someone advocating the killing of school lunch programs on a conservative policy basis has forgotten one key reason why Federal school lunch programs were started in the first place. 

It was to ensure children, especially boys received adequate nutrition so they minimize the chances they won’t be physically unfit for military service once they reached the age of 18 or so.  This was informed by experiences during WWII when thousands of draft-aged men had to be rejected for military service because they were physically unfit due to nutritional deficiencies and associated illnesses due to their family’s low socio-economic status….which was further worsened by the Great Depression. 

This, of course, leaves out the fact it was also an effective subsidy for various agricultural business interests.

I know most of the robots who frequent this putrid site agree wholeheartedly in the death of kids

KILL ALL <strike>underaged</strike> HUMANS!

And yes, kristen, when it comes to anything baby-killing-related I always try to be first in line. ;p

A few months after I moved to Montreal, it struck me that in all the ubiquitous street advertising, there was almost nothing aimed at children—the closest things were ads for zoos and water parks.

Turns out that Quebec pretty much bans advertising aimed at children under 13.  Oh, those French Canadians, with their total lack of respect for free speech!

Today was a perfect illustration in the morning.

My daughter never ever gets what she wants by whining or having a tantrum. Not once in her entire life. She still throws them, every time she’s hungry. I fear she inherited my unbelievable metabolism. This morning it was over a ponytail. She wanted one like Rainbow Brite’s, and so my wife obliged. Despite it being exactly where my daughter had indicated, it was in the wrong place. So my wife re-did it in the new location, and it was still in the wrong place. After much kicking and screaming, we got some food into her and she finally let me finish getting her ready for school and accepted (grudgingly) that we weren’t going to give her a ponytail.

Picking her up from school, same thing, except because I picked her up when she was expecting her mother. Tears, recrimination, screaming. Got her home, fed her something, happy as can be.

Does any of this make me a bad parent? Hell, no. It makes me the parent of a willful child who wants things in a very particular way. Like me, she gets moody and lashes out when she’s hungry. Food fixes us both right up. Parenting has nothing to do with that. When I control her food intake, I just make sure it’s plentiful and we’re all good. Speaking of which, time to make dinner for the little monsters…

Another thing that is important to remember is that parents don’t always agree on what constitutes “good parenting”. My closest friend struggled with having a partner who (before and after they were separated) used food as a wedge to drive between she and their son. She was the killjoy who “forced” healthy meals on the family and he was the fun parent who bought fast food and all kinds of sugary and processed crap. This made her ability to maintain healthy eating habits even more difficult because of the inevitable “dad lets me” card being thrown down. There was a distinct escalation in tantrums during grocery shopping or while walking past a fast food restaurant after their separation. Having a partner who doesn’t offer support in issues of food only compounds the pressure from the allure of advertisements and the prominence of unhealthy choices.

@50

Quebec isn’t the only place in Canada with a policy like that, when I visited Vancouver B.C. it was the same.  Advertising even during kids programing was minimal and aimed at adults.  The most memorable to me was the vacuum cleaner commercial, targeted very specifically to the man of the house.  It was implied that the vacuum was a power tool for manly men and that men just naturally did the vacuuming in every family.

you’re basically arguing that children who have the misfortune of having bad parents deserve to suffer.

Wow, I think that’s the most concise definition of conservatism I’ve ever seen.

Turns out that Quebec pretty much bans advertising aimed at children under 13.

That sounds sensible to me.  I don’t know any kid under 10 with their own disposable income.  Any advertising targeted at young kids is, in effect, aiming to turn the kids into marketing weapons against their parents.  Really, the companies are deliberately interfering with the parent-child relationship - and more insidiously than any government interference I can think of.

Okay. My first response is that I see nothing wrong with the idea that everyone should have a meal plan with the public school and eat there during the school year, none save the food quality often available anyway.  Hopefully I’ll be able to come back an comment further before the thread blows up.

It’s finals week.

If that’s the case, I’d seriously recommend you concentrate on hitting the books so you or your parents don’t end up whining or worse, throwing a temper tantrum in front of the Profs and/or TAs in an attempt to get an undeserved grade change.  That or trying to explain it away by blaming the poor grade on the Prof’s/TA’s apocryphal “foreign accent”.

To everyone else:

Are there good parenting techniques to be used so the willful child won’t turn into an entitled douchebag young adult who believes s(he)‘s exempt from the rules everyone else must follow because s(he)‘s so “wonderful” and “intelligent” to the parents while said child’s behavior, academic/employment performance, and everything else shows otherwise?

Y’all, I am almost 40 years old for fuck’s sake.  Believe it or not, feminists can and do disagree on the appropriate use of slang words and that doesn’t make them bad feminists, nor does it make them trolls, unless, as someone reminded me last time, we’re at Shakesville.

geogami, there are places like that.  But then parents notice that the playtoys are actually filthy, that one child can touch another with deadly peanut butter and it all goes downhill from there if the owners try to get any profit from it. 

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=3629742063958650489&q=peanut+butter+sandwiches+near+portland,+or&hl=en&ved=0CHsQuAUwAg&sa=X&ei=dP3_TMG8MovKsAPhtqC1CA

Of course, they closed their cafe after that.

Can you post something about how Obama always gives in to those whiny GOP brats?

you’re basically arguing that children who have the misfortune of having poor parents deserve to suffer.

Wow, I think that’s the most concise definition of conservatism I’ve ever seen.

ftfy!

@59 - I definitely agree.  I’m not that old, yet (getting there, I suppose), but I pretty clearly remember coming home from school (walking, most of a mile, rain or shine or horrid winter white stuff - maybe mom would take pity and pick me up if it was a monsoon or lightning storm), tossing my book bag down on the floor of the hall, screaming something to the effect of, “Mom!  I’m hoooommmeee!” and running back out the door to play.  The rule was, approximately - that I could stay out until the street lights came on, or until my dad came out into the front yard and bellowed for me to return.  Must have been that way from elementary school through 8th or 9th grade, at least.  Now, that perspective is informed by an upbringing in a quiet, working-class suburb (back when working class folks like my dad, the high-school teacher, Mr. N the Ford line-worker, and Mr. B the long-haul trucker could afford a modest home in a quiet suburb), so there’s a certain amount of privilege there that you wouldn’t find in an area with a lot more traffic and fewer or no yards and fields and driveways to play in, but… I see my current friends and acquaintances raising kids now, and even the ones who share that sort of privilege don’t let their kids out of their sight to play.  Ever.  Maybe if there’s another parent or other trusted adult standing guard.  Maybe.

Not that they didn’t care about our safety.  They did.  If we were going far, it was always “call me when you get there, and before you leave to come home.”  We were given all the lectures about not ever going with strangers, and how to cross the street, and how not to do dangerous, stupid stunts.  (We mostly ignored the last one, and survived.)  And there was usually _a_ parent within screaming distance, if needed.  But not always my parents.  And certainly not spending all their time watching us, ready to intervene on a moment’s notice. 

When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I broke my arm - fell off my bike when I hit a curb at a wierd angle, and it decided to hit back.  What I remember about that is that I got up, looked at my arm, and went to call my mom from the corner gas station to come take me to the hospital.*  Why didn’t I just go home?  Because at that age, I was about 4 miles from home, having ridden my bike with my neighbor Donny to the local curiosity shop to look at the fish in their acquarium section.  (They had a lot of cool looking fish - it was a pretty decent part of their business.)  That wasn’t an ususual day, except for the breaking my arm part.  We’d ridden down town many times before, and would many times again, after I healed, in little packs of 2 or 4.  I can’t even begin to imagine any of the current parents I know letting their kids do that.  It seems so strange, and so constricting.

*My mom didn’t believe me.  She figured I couldn’t have broken my arm if I was as calm as I sounded.  She believed me when she showed up and saw the way it was bending in a spot arms shouldn’t bend.

so there’s a certain amount of privilege there that you wouldn’t find in an area with a lot more traffic and fewer or no yards and fields and driveways to play in, but…

BUT…. let’s ignore all that, people - we’ve got a Back In My Day argument to make here! 

People who live in areas with lots of yards and fields and safe driveways are exactly at the wealth and privilege level where they don’t have to take their kids to a fast-food playland for safe play. If you don’t raise your kids in an urban area where you have no real lawn, no safe parks and the streets and driveways are dangerous, then your halcyon childhood is completely fucking irrelevant.

#39: further proof that a bare minimum requirement for wingnuttery is illiteracy.

If you don’t raise your kids in an urban area where you have no real lawn, no safe parks and the streets and driveways are dangerous, then your halcyon childhood is completely fucking irrelevant.

Not true. It’s exactly in those suburban safe zones that parents are at their highest level of fear for “omigod, if I let my kids leave my block they’ll be kidnapped by pedophiles!”

I live in a big city. I have a yard, but lots of people don’t. I still see the kids playing outside. Because people in a city have a sense of perspective that people in the suburbs don’t seem to.

I don’t think it’s the urban working moms who are taking their kids to McDonald’s for the play area; I know of no McDonald’s within city limits that *has* a play area. Those are in the suburbs and you need a car to get to them.

In the *exact same* suburban zones with the driveways and the cul-de-sacs, the culture has changed since we were all kids, to demand more supervision and more driving and less freedom for kids. The urban areas where the kids aren’t safe to play? They never were safe to play. They weren’t safe forty years ago, they aren’t safe now, and yet the kids play in the street anyway, because getting to the suburban McDonald’s on the bus is too much of a trip for the average family to manage on a frequent basis.

Which part of “having an unhealthy diet” causes the child to “suffer”? 

I consider having bad health to be “suffering”.  Have you ever been around someone with diabetes/heart disease/strokes?  It’s suffering!  I promise you.  It’s often very painful, but also the maintenance is a pain in the ass.  The side effects of diabetes can be quite brutal—-it interferes with circulation, and so diabetes often lose limbs.  Indeed, I would say that the reason that people deem something “unhealthy” is less some arbitrary moral standard, but because it causes the suffering that we deem bad health.

Answer your question?  I don’t think children have the mental capacity to understand that bad food today equals poor health tomorrow, so they are innocents having suffering put upon them.

So, if I’m understanding Jerome @43 correctly, I’m

a) A sick woman who has no idea how to raise children and
b) I should be forced to give birth against my will.

Clearly, this is not For The Children, or he would see the contradiction between his beliefs. However, if he believes children are punishment from god inflicted on women for fucking men who aren’t him, then it makes a lot more sense!  But that’s a terrible way to think of children, Jerome.  I like children too much to believe they should be punishment for imaginary crimes.

how about we all reach for that loquacious higher bar and stop limiting our take-downs to one-word, single syllable been there, done that obscenities that weren’t that edgy when Carlin first informed us we couldn’t say them on T.V

How about for the same reason, Scrumby, that AManda and others on here have defended as human and .a.o.k. that we don’t always feed our kids the most nutritious foods, nor homecook meals.  We have lives, and meeting the p.c. preferences or loquaciousness bar of every individual on a blog is going to limit participants to the independently wealthy, the lonely librarians/techies and guys/techies living in mommy’s basement types.

I’m open to the idea that it’s unethical for McDonald’s et al. to market to parents through their kids, but how to spend the food budget remains the parents’ decision.

Uh, in theory, but only if that theory encompasses only the superhero parent.  Just like the kids cited who are good 98% of the time, the best parents cave under stress and nagging at least 2% of the time - and when someone, no multiple by the hundred someones,  is devoting more money in one day than most of us will see in a lifetime, to indoctrinating kids into nagging for their product, then that’s an unfair advantage and unreasonable to expect parents to combat constantly.  This type of marketing causes parents to be the bad guys a whole lot more than is natural,  normal or healthy.

myth, I think there’s a middle ground between suggesting not everyone has privilege and that there is a lot of unnecessary fear ginned up by the media.  I think the latter is pretty obvious, especially when you think of how many Americans think they have to arm themselves to the teeth.

Interesting point, exholt.  My local NPR site had a story last week (?) that the armed services are again having problems with unfit and incapable recruits - not malnutrition this time, though.  Here’s teh original report:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/usmilitary/a/unabletoserve.htm

Sorry mythago, but I was raised in a major city - think bungalow single family homes on 25 foot wide lots with a few 2-3 flat apartment building thrown in per block.  Granted, it wasn’t inner city as in CBD, highrises area, but it was what a large part of most major cities was and is - blue collar, cops, fireman, etc. and I can corroborate libdevil’s description.  The only difference, is that while we may have ridden bikes to the neighborhood’ “town” (commercial district) we may also have taken public transit both to get to school and to visit the CBD by late middle, and certainly high, school.

In the *exact same* suburban zones with the driveways and the cul-de-sacs, the culture has changed since we were all kids, to demand more supervision and more driving and less freedom for kids. The urban areas where the kids aren’t safe to play? They never were safe to play. They weren’t safe forty years ago, they aren’t safe now, and yet the kids play in the street anyway, because getting to the suburban McDonald’s on the bus is too much of a trip for the average family to manage on a frequent basis.

#68

Agree.  This conforms to my own childhood experiences of being allowed to take the NYC subway and otherwise wander around what was then a crime-ridden working-class neighborhood/city.  Only thing where I will differ is that in the case of the areas of NYC I am familiar with at least, it has actually become much more safe for kids to play in the neighborhood parks, streets, and walk around NYC than it was when I was a kid in the 1980’s IME and from what I heard from friends and neighbors who are parents or young children/teens themselves. 

A great illustration of this is seeing plenty of well-to-do families with young children stay out past 1 am at least in Times Square nowadays considering that area was once considered so crime-ridden and run-down that such families tended to avoid the area if they could help it, especially at night.  If I had predicted back in the 1980’s that this would happen in less than 20 years to my childhood friends and neighbors…they would be wondering what funky substances had I been smoking. 

This feeling that NYC has gotten much safer compared to my childhood days is such that watching most Hollywood portrayals of NYC being quite chaotic and crime-ridden was like watching a cartoonish caricature of my NYC experiences as a kid in the ‘80s or moreso…my parents/older friends’ experiences of NYC during the late 1960’s and ‘70s.

Jerome,

You’re the only here who’s been violent.

Get lost.

Off topic but…
Is anyone else having problems loading Pandagon lately? It has been a lot slower then usual.
Amanda, are you going to write anything about the Obama/ Republican tax cut deal? Its been upsetting and frustrating me all week and I’d be interested to hear your take on the matter…
Sorry again for the off topic-ness…

[blockqoute]How about for the same reason, Scrumby, that AManda and others on here have defended as human and .a.o.k. that we don’t always feed our kids the most nutritious foods, nor homecook meals.  We have lives, and meeting the p.c. preferences or loquaciousness bar of every individual on a blog is going to limit participants to the independently wealthy, the lonely librarians/techies and guys/techies living in mommy’s basement types.

Did you even read what I wrote or are you just singling out my comment because you already had your ass handed to you by the people who challenged your misogynistic word choice? You can find the time to write a seventy word screed about how some people don’t have the time to write more but you can’t take a few seconds to come up with a more appropriate descriptor for a person than bitch? Except you did just that in your second comment two hours later. So…second wind?

My kids get out of school at 12:20 on Wednesdays, so I picked them up today and took them to McDonald’s.  They get lunch before they get dismissed, but I thought I’d eat lunch and they could have an ice cream.  So we get there, and I facetiously ask if they want a Happy Meal or an ice cream sundae, and my 5 year old says he wants the Happy Meal.  And I say, “Really?”  And he says, “Yeah.  I want the toy.”

We have loads and loads of these crappy kids’ meal toys that we’ve accumlated that are worthless that they never play with, yet the kid would rather have a hamburger and the crappy toy than an ice cream sundae.

I don’t have a point.  It just made me think of this post.

Again, the comparison to Japan is striking. The elementary schools (at least) in Japan serve all the kids as a matter of course. There’s a playground fairly close to my house that sits just outside a building dedicated to the making of school lunches, and they’re quite healthy lunches.

Though the education system has its flaws, the children here have a constitution-granted right to it. In fact, government forms that are required to be delivered in person have a caveat that they can send a proxy if the requirement to deliver it in person would interfere with their education.

Some parts of Canada have school lunch programmes, though my own school cafeteria was pretty lame when I was going to school. If people claim to value children, it seems sensible to have a healthy lunch served at school. But people like Jerome B. only seem to care about children up to the point where they are born. Only us “baby-killing” liberals care about what happens after.

Not to imply things are perfect over here, though… the most convenient landmark in giving directions to my house is the Macdonald’s at the end of the street.

It seems like the low blood sugar thing is a large part of the “tantrum” thing.

Same with the feeling of physical pain from eardrums that causes many babies to freak out in airplanes.

Basically, it seems that most of the tantrum stuff is due to the simple fact that children have not yet developed the complex repression of outward expression of internal emotional states.

By this I mean, most adults have a complex system of internal censors so that when they say feel disappointment or hungry or are freaking out or are massively depressed, it doesn’t impede their functions and they can more or less still function with others and maybe even seem perfectly fine or “only a little off or easy to disrupt”.

With children, that system is not yet developed so if they are hungry or feel thwarted or get an irrational want, they express it. And the younger they are, the more “pure” this expression will be with regards to internal mood or physical discomfort.

Our culture of reacting with anger when this happens as though the children are trying to personally punish us may be part of teaching them this process, but more likely might be an idiotic thing to do to people who can’t help it because they haven’t developed adult-level internal emotional repression.

And seriously, blood sugar is damn important. So many people seem to have massive emotional swings depending on blood sugar level.

exholt, I am not sure the venn diagram between “entitled douchebag” and “nineteen-year-old college student” has a lot of space on either side. God knows I was a jackass at that point.

(I will say that I think that our present culture of Your Children Must Be Supervised 100% Percent of the Time Until They Leave Home Or Else They Will Be Sexually Assaulted or Shoot Their Classmates is completely crippling. I also think that that culture is one reason why private indoor playplaces are a necessary institution - I’m not going to blame the parents there, but it certainly all feeds back on itself as a culture. If children shouldn’t play outside unsupervised at any age, you don’t need playgrounds within walking distance of much of anybody.)

#59

I understand the increasing tendency to helicopter parent among upper/upper-middle class families has contributed massively to this problem.  I’ve lost count of how many horror stories friends who teach/TA at various private universities..especially the Ivies related about being subjected to and having to deal with such temper tantrum throwing undergrads or worse….their parents over the fact they feel if they pays their money…they deserve to get a degree and an 4.0 transcript…..even if the undergrad concerned turns in slipshod work or worse…no work period. 

It is strange as this wasn’t nearly as common when I was an undergrad in the mid-late ‘90s.  Back then, classmates throwing tantrums about grades…especially when it turned out to be groundless and undergrads who bring in their parents to deal with matters we felt should be dealt with by the students themselves tended to be viewed with disdain and even disgust by the rest of the student body as immature and extremely disrespectful of the instructors and the educational process. 

It is one thing to act like this as a child or adolescent in K-12.  It is another if one is an 18-22+ adult.

Older @2, that’s ridiculous. Temper tantrums are not a sign of bad parenting, and neither is not screaming at the child. My daughter was so mild-mannered as a child as to be reasonably described as “phlegmatic”, and yet every once in a while her fundamentally childish nature would emerge and she’d be on the floor kicking and screaming. It happens not because of bad parenting, but because of emotional overload, tiredness, hunger (as I’d suspect if a child was screaming for cheese of all things), and multiple other reasons. And frankly, the absolute last thing you want to do is respond angrily or harshly. What’s more ridiculous than a child having a temper tantrum? That’s right, an adult screaming at a child for having a temper tantrum. Ignoring it, or in the worst case removing the child from the situation, is the way to go. That’s why my phlegmatic daughter was carried from the pool, kicking and screaming, exactly once before she got the message, and that’s why the cheese-denying man was calmly denying cheese instead of screaming. That’s not bad parenting, it’s good parenting.

My parents grew up in unsafe neighborhoods in NYC. They just played in the street—ball games, tag, jump rope, you name it. My dad rode his bike all over Brooklyn and Queens.

I spent my childhood in a traffic congested suburban rental complex in northern Virginia. I rode my bike over I-395 overpasses to distant shopping malls, and scoured the garbage rooms of every development in Alexandria (where old Mad Magazines could be sometimes scored).

My younger brother grew up in affluent suburban Connecticut. He treated every backyard and Long Island sound beachfront as open territory. One of our neighbor’s yards was home to a perpetual pick-up football game for tweens.

Sadly, every place I used to roam has been fenced, and I rarely see children playing unsupervised games outdoors.

It’s deeply sad. I think part of why children behave so badly is that they don’t get to be children any more. They’re just junior consumers.

Cerberus @ 85, exactly. Tantrums can be intended to manipulate, but they can also just be a kid having a strong emotion he or she doesn’t know how to control.

As a grown woman, I get irritable and upset when my blood sugar’s low. I certainly feel like throwing a tantrum when that happens. Of course, I’m an adult, so I’ve learned to prevent myself from doing so. But I can completely understand why little kids melt down when they need to eat.

“Her father was patiently denying her the cheese, but if he caved just to shut her up, I wouldn’t have blamed him.”

Yeah, well I would have.  I raised two kids in a suburban environment where they were surrounded by this a lot.  My wife and I taught them that tantrums would be counter-productive.  Not only would they not get what they wanted, but something they had would be taken away.  Your post on Jason Assage was entitled something along the lines of “Let’s act like grown-ups”.  Seems like that applies here.  Parents need to understand that you have to choose whether to be a resonsible parent or be your kids’ buddy.  You can’t do both.

Note - a kid having a tantrum is not to me the sign of a bad parent.  Kids will have tantrums, and they’re not dumb about choosing to do it in public.  What’s a sign of a bad parent is when the tantrum gets cut off quick because Mom or Dad caves and buys the kid a cheesburger/handgun/whatever.

Now, should kids get punished if they have bad parents?  No.  But letting McD’s et. al. sell kids’ meals with toys in them isn’t punishing kids.  The fact that a parent can let bad things happen to their kid by providing them with too much of a legitimate product doesn’t mean that either the producer of that product or the State is punishing the child.  You could use that rationale to regulate just about anything.  The State can’t take the place of a parent.  If it could we could close half the prisons.

Oh, and this “When I was a kid we ....” deal?  When I was a kid in semi-suburban Massachusetts we’d get all the guys together to play baseball/football in the across-the-street neighbor’s field.  In spring/summer we played baseball with a high school kid throwing fastballs to a 6th grader with no protective gear and a flat rock about the right size embedded in the ground for home plate.  Slide at your own risk.  No adults anywhere to be seen.  Rule/judgement disputes were settled among ourselves.  We played tackle football, again with no pads or helmets.  We had a blast.  Nowadays what would happen would be that some kid would come home with a cut or broken finger and the next morning the owner of that field would find themselves in a lawsuit from the injuried kid’s parents.  And that’s why you can’t run from back yard to back yard anymore.

So now kids can’t play sports unless an adult teaches them the skills and an adult provides them with 20 pounds of equipment and an adult decides who’s on what team and an adult decides who plays where and when and adults set up and run the field and an adult keeps score and an adult makes all the calls and no wonder the kids would rather play video games - there’s no adults around.  Lacrosse has jumped up in leaps and bounds in poplularity with high school kids across the country.  Illinois had about 6 teams a few years ago and now it’s got 70.  Sports Illustrated did a survey of kids across the country and asked them why they liked and played the game.  Reason #2 or #3 was essentially “Mom and Dad don’t know the rules or how the game works so they STFU and don’t get involved.”

Delishka, @53:

The most memorable to me was the vacuum cleaner commercial, targeted very specifically to the man of the house.  It was implied that the vacuum was a power tool for manly men and that men just naturally did the vacuuming in every family.

I wonder; this may have been politically correct, but did it sell vacuun cleaners?

Okay, may be I shouldn’t have used the term “bad parenting”, especially since so many of you assumed that I was calling the dad a “Bad Parent”.  Actually, I don’t think it’s possible to raise kids without parenting badly at times; it’s just too difficult a job.

I have a lot of experience raising kids; I have raised three successive families of them, some born into my family; some adopted into it.  And yes, they come in all types.  Some people I knew once said that they could never adopt, because they were such an unusual family that they were sure sure adopted kids could never fit in.  I turned to my husband and said “They have either one kid, or none.”  Because anyone with more than one child knows that they’re all separate people and they’re all different.

But.  Yes, I did experience some of that kind of behavior from my youngsters, but not often.  And I was able to teach some of them, gently, not to do that (notice I wished dad well in his efforts).  But sometimes it required sterner measures.  Such as leaving the store or other public place immediately, or not taking the child into such places for a while, or making a point of not buying what it was that was being whined for, or . . . something else, who knows.

In fact, not one, but two, of my kids (one born here, one adopted) threw tantrums like that, and we learned how to deal with it.  It did involve getting out of there, but then the treatment was to hug the kid as tightly as you could and saying over and over, “I love you, be quiet, I love you”.  I know, one cannot always do this.  But sooner or later, we had to.  And no one ever said raising kids would be easy or convenient.  I used to have a coffee mug that said “Raising kids is like raising corn.  It’s hard, it takes a long time, and there’s no money in it.”  Fair warning.

@ 12.  I’ve seen stubbles before, but can’t remember if stubbles is a troll (or trollish).  Obviously hasn’t been paying attention or would know Phyl is a dude.

Note - a kid having a tantrum is not to me the sign of a bad parent.  Kids will have tantrums, and they’re not dumb about choosing to do it in public.  What’s a sign of a bad parent is when the tantrum gets cut off quick because Mom or Dad caves and buys the kid a cheesburger/handgun/whatever.
Comment #95: RonF on 12/09 at 01:52 PM

You know, kids are actually overwhelmed in public places sometimes.  It’s called sensory overload.  Younger kids especially don’t have the tools to deal with this kind of thing.  Just because it upsets the parent doesn’t make it intentional emotional manipulation.

And parents can’t always take the kid out of the situation.  Sometimes us adults just need to “take one for the team” and deal with a child in a public place acting up.

Parents don’t always prioritize peace and quiet over avoiding traumatizing a child who’s already obviously upset.  Thank goodness.  Yes, you may be able to shock them into silence with threats, shouting or violence.  Having been shocked into silence from by a parent thusly, I can attest that it doesn’t build trust or really calm the child down.  She’s just too scared to move.

Yes, you may be able to shock them into silence with threats, shouting or violence.

I once shocked a cousin throwing a tantrum at a family gathering by acting like I was having a tantrum, he got quiet when he realized what he was doing and we were able to resume our meal without any lasting trauma.

Like a Chinese wolf, my mother was quick to note her anger and displeasure at any untoward behavior on my part with a quick flare of temper that didn’t scar the recipient and was only used as a last resort.

I once acted up at nursery school and after Mother Avenger did her recreation of the White-Boned Demon to put me back in my place, the other children were staring at me, terror-struck at the hellish mother I had to go home with that day.

OTOH, she noticed that I always managed to throw myself on the soft part of the sofa when I had a tantrum at home.

I once caused serious concern when I held my breath and passed out because I was so mad and determined not to breath. Then I came to, scared a bit, so I’m told.

When I’m out and about, I can usually tell when kids are tired and/or hungry by the sound of their voice, there’s some frequency that no doubt used to mean “It’s time to feed our cave monkeys.  Do we still have any roast auroch left?”

Any intelligent species would want all offspring fed, even if individual members don’t have children that would benefit from such a policy.  That’s Darwin 101.

Anything else is window-dressing for anti-rationalism.

Parents need to understand that you have to choose whether to be a resonsible parent or be your kids’ buddy.  You can’t do both.

Nonsense. Ever heard of a mentor?

sometimes it required sterner measures.  Such as leaving the store or other public place immediately, or not taking the child into such places for a while, or making a point of not buying what it was that was being whined for

Leaving the public place means you have to get the kid to a private place, which usually entails traveling through more public places since few of us have matter-transporter units.

Not taking the child into trigger places in the future doesn’t stop the tantrum that’s happening right then. And in my experience most kids don’t have tantrums regularly in a certain type of place—they have them when they’re hungry/tired/frustrated/overwhelmed, which can happen pretty much anywhere.

Making a point of not buying what was whined for might avoid future whining (although as a kid, I remember being told “don’t whine” and thinking “what the hell does that mean? I’m asking for something, why does she keep bugging me about whining” so there may well be a genuine age-related lack of understanding about the subject there) but again, it doesn’t stop the tantrum that’s happening right now, and probably will escalate it in the short term.

The dad with the cheese-screaming kid might have been doing all three of those things for all anyone knows, but he still had a tantruming kid in public, allowing you to expound on how if he only did things right it never would have happened. Jeez.

purpleshoes: Not entirely new information… information I had forgotten. Still, what I went on about is relevant in that ALL the children are expected to eat the school lunch here, which makes a difference to children who may feel ashamed of partaking in school lunches if it means their parents are poor.

But yes, I was assuming that there were no school lunches, so thank you for the correction.

Amphigorey wrote:

The point of the law is not to police the behavior of parents; the point is to put a rein on rampant corporate advertising to and manipulation of children. The aim is at McDonald’s and how it markets its crappy food, not to try to tell parents what to feed their children.

Too bad that pesky First Amendment gets in the way, huh?

exholt asked:

Are there good parenting techniques to be used so the willful child won’t turn into an entitled douchebag young adult who believes s(he)’s exempt from the rules everyone else must follow because s(he)’s so “wonderful” and “intelligent” to the parents while said child’s behavior, academic/employment performance, and everything else shows otherwise?

You can find half a zillion books on child rearing, and get all sorts of different answers to the same question.  The simple fact is that what works well for bring up some children doesn’t succeed as well for others.

Our daughters turned out fine, but I’m still not convinced that it wasn’t due to pure, dumb luck.

phylosopher @ 75:  It’s an interesting report, but note that the military is now excluding potential recruits who were not graduated from high school; that now includes those who made up by getting a GED.  The armed services now have enough recruits that they can take this exclusion and still meet their recruiting goals.

AdamN asked:

Is anyone else having problems loading Pandagon lately? It has been a lot slower then usual.

Yes, and on more than one computer, in more than one location.

Too bad that pesky First Amendment gets in the way, huh?

Seen a Marlboro commercial lately? Commercial speech—speech that merely proposes a business transaction—is the least protected speech.

Too bad that pesky First Amendment gets in the way, huh?

Dana, commercial speech has long been recognized by law as being an exception to the 1st Amendment, my comment @ #24 is an example of that at work, and it’s a fairly recent concept:

The idea of “Commercial Speech” was first introduced by the Supreme Court when it upheld Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942). In upholding the regulation, the Supreme Court said, “We are … clear that the Constitution imposes … no restraint on government as respects purely commercial advertising.”

In a 1978 decision, Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Ass’n, the Court offered this defense:

  We have not discarded the “common-sense” distinction between speech proposing a commercial transaction, which occurs in an area traditionally subject to government regulation, and other varieties of speech. To require a parity of constitutional protection for commercial and noncommercial speech alike could invite dilution, simply by a leveling process, of the force of the Amendment’s guarantee with respect to the latter kind of speech. Rather than subject the First Amendment to such a devitalization, we instead have afforded commercial speech a limited measure of protection, commensurate with its subordinate position in the scale of First Amendment values, while allowing modes of regulation that might be impermissible in the realm of noncommercial expression.

There are those on the Supreme Court that disagree with this “common-sense” distinction, though. Justice Clarence Thomas replied, in 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island (1996), that “I do not see a philosophical or historical basis for asserting that ‘commercial’ speech is of ‘lower value’ than ‘noncommercial’ speech.”

Federal judge Alex Kozinski stated, in regards to the 1942 ruling, “the Supreme Court plucked the commercial speech doctrine out of thin air.”

I’d suggest that Citizens United v FEC would have an impact here.  The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law .  .  . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”  I don’t see where “no law” is somehow ambiguous, and it’s looking like the Roberts court is coming around to that position.

Apples and oranges, Dana, you’re talking about politics vs. commercial speech.

To take your interpretation to the logical conclusion, you really think that the Roberts court will abolish libel laws because “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”?

John Stuart Mill states your problem succinctly:

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

I don’t see where “no law” is somehow ambiguous,

See United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce, 72 F.2d 705, 706 (2d Cir. 1934). (Literary work not prohibitively obscene after considering (1) the work as a whole, not just selected excerpts; (2) its effect on an average, rather than overly sensitive person; and (3) contemporary community standards.)

For a more recent example, consider Wikileaks.

But political speech is the most protected speech, essentially because that was the speech the Framers most cared about.

Jerome,

Some believer you are… cursing all the time like that.
Do you talk to your pastor with that mouth?

The Dark Avenger wrote:

To take your interpretation to the logical conclusion, you really think that the Roberts court will abolish libel laws because “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”?

Libel actions, along with the shibboleth about yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, are not things which restrict your right to speak, but are actions which hold you responsible for te consequences of your speech.  If you slander or libel someone, and it causes him actual harm, you can be held liable for the damages you caused; if it causes no demonstrable harm, you’re really not liable for any damages.  If you yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but everybody knows it was a joke and no panic insues, with no injuries resulting, there are no consequences to your action for which you are liable; you just have no recourse if the theater owner throws you out.

The First Amendment takes no distinction between various types of speech; I don’t see why the courts or the legislature should.

Libel actions, along with the shibboleth about yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, are not things which restrict your right to speak, but are actions which hold you responsible for te consequences of your speech.  If you slander or libel someone, and it causes him actual harm, you can be held liable for the damages you caused; if it causes no demonstrable harm, you’re really not liable for any damages.

The same is true for commercial speech.

If I, as a pomegranate farmer in the fair Monongo Valley of CA, write letters to the newspaper extolling the health values of pomegranate juice, that’s covered by the 1st Amendment, even though it could be self-interest rather than self-expression that drives my writing.

If, however, I attempt to market the juice I produce as the most wonderful breakthrough in nutrition and cancer prevention, unless I can back up those claims, I can only stick to the facts known about pomegranate juice, even though this is a clear limitation of my speech.

The First Amendment takes no distinction between various types of speech; I don’t see why the courts or the legislature should.

Yes, just like the 2nd Amendment doesn’t distinguish between a flintlock or AK-47, I don’t see why the courts or the legislature should either.

@95 “CONSARN IT BACK IN MY DAY”: Did you wear an onion on your belt too? I hear that was the style at the time.

“People who judge people as bad parents because the witness a public tantrum usually are either childless or so far removed from their parenting days that they have forgotten that this happens to everybody.”

Ding Ding Ding!  Lexie, I think you really hit it on the head with this comment. 

Btw, I have 5 year old twins (boys, and don’t even get me started on the bullshit sexual stereotypes I constantly hear from total strangers about having two(!) boys, but I digress) and it really has been a sobering and humbling experience in how much I really didn’t know about parenting before I had kids.  Really, even if you try to prepare yourself with tons of research and thoughful introspection it’s pretty impossible to insure that your child(ren) will always be well nourished, well slept, kind and tantrum free every second of their existence.  Thinking otherwise is just pure folly.

Lexie, Lolagirl,

The person who was most strongly advocating something like “you can get them to stop tantruming if you’re a good enough parent and stop trying to be their buddy,” RonF, is a parent. 

I have no children and I don’t think tantrums are a sign of bad parenting.

Just two data points, I know, but there you are.

It doesn’t help to stereotype people who haven’t had children, or haven’t had them for a long time, as stupid and mean about kids.  Some of us have younger relatives and neighbors and mothers with children we spend time with, and we have the power of observation just like you do. 

And we often do remember what it was like to be a kid and may have empathy for kids that some parents (especially the “second parent” (often the father) who comes home to a house full of chaos and children and just wants them to shut up) have abandoned.

Dark Avenger, it’s starting to make sense now why you think yelling at people is an effective argumentation tactic.  Fear doesn’t work so well over the internet, though.

Dark Avenger, it’s starting to make sense now why you think yelling at people is an effective argumentation tactic.  Fear doesn’t work so well over the internet, though.

oldfeminist, you have no idea what my family was like or what kind of person my mother was like, so thank you for your valuble input.

Patronizing folks has an equal lack of success over the internets as well, for your future reference.

Dark Avenger, you show admiration for a specific thing you describe your mother doing:  using intimidation as a means of communication. 

And then you immediately offer “how dare you” as an opening gambit.  Make a scary face at me (what did you say about *my* *MOTHER*) to try to frighten me into shutting up.  Exactly what you explicitly admired in your mother’s actions!

Unless you want to disavow your admiration for her I think you’ve talked yourself into a hole.  You just keep digging.

Dark Avenger, you show admiration for a specific thing you describe your mother doing:  using intimidation as a means of communication.

Um, she didn’t intimidate me, she merely kept me from acting like a brat without any lasting damage to my psyche.

And then you immediately offer “how dare you” as an opening gambit.  Make a scary face at me (what did you say about *my* *MOTHER*) to try to frighten me into shutting up.  Exactly what you explicitly admired in your mother’s actions!

You’re not acting bratty, I’m just telling the truth that you choose to judge me and mine from one incident, why you should consider that SCARY!  is for someone with more psychological expertise than I.

Unless you want to disavow your admiration for her I think you’ve talked yourself into a hole.  You just keep digging.

Oh, I’ll get on with my life with or without your disapproval, and if you want to ask Amanda to ban me from this site so that you don’t have to deal with me in the future, go ahead, perhaps she’ll listen to you and do so.

Wow, Dark Avenger, I have no interest in asking Amanda to ban you.  I can’t imagine where that idea came from.  I’ve never asked anyone to be banned from this site, publicly or privately.

You expressed admiration for a tactic your mother used.  I noted that you seem to like using that kind of tactic.  I never claimed to know you or your mother (or now your family!) well, just that something she did, that you admired, I see you doing, too.

I wonder if there is anything else I didn’t say that you will next claim I offended you with.

to scrumby@#81 - yep.  two hours later - duh, not necessarily certain I would have time later - sorry I don’t meet you blog dedication bar.  Liek, you wouldn’t have flipped that other driver the bird if you knew you’d be standing in line behind him at the unemployment line where you could point out the faults of his parentage, his education and his fashion choices for full two hours later in the day.

Spyware and virus  are the growing fast online threat, infecting nearly 95% of Internet connected computers. In this case, what can you do if you want to get away from spyware virus infection?

A couple of comments have disappeared, here and on the “Do people need nutrition” post.  Not sure if it’s because of the issues with the site or active moderation or what.  Still getting spam posts (e.g. 128).

Giving this information not as a complaint but for debugging purposes since I know the site’s being fine-tuned right now.