By Steve Rhodes
“The only person you can legally hit in the United States is a child,” Mel Robbins writes at CNN Opinion in the aftermath of the Adrian Peterson saga.
“Hit your partner, and you’ll be arrested for domestic violence. Hit another adult, and you’ll be arrested for assault. But hit a 4-year-old, and you can call yourself a ‘loving father.’ That’s completely screwed up.
“It should be against the law for a fully grown adult to slap, hit, spank, punch, switch, whoop, whip, paddle, kick or belt a defenseless child in the name of discipline. But it is legal, and new research in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests that the average 4-year-old is hit 936 times a year.
“If study after study conclusively proves that hitting your kids doesn’t work as a disciplinary method, and worse, it has long-term damaging impact to their psychology and makes your kids more aggressive, why do we as a society allow it?”
That’s a good question for Windy City Live co-host Val Warner and her band of apologists, including Tribune columnist John Kass.
Posted on September 16, 2014