Shortly after David and Sharon Schoo were indicted last week on charges that they beat, kicked and choked their two daughters, their defense attorneys issued a warning to other parents:
If the couple could be prosecuted for disciplining their children, they said, any parent who had ever lifted a hand or a belt to spank their child also is at risk.
“Most families who discipline their children with any degree of punishment, whether it’s with a belt or spanking or hitting, would . . . compare themselves to the Schoos,” the Schoos’ attorney, Herbert Hill, said Friday. “I think most families would find they could be charged with aggravated battery, battery and cruelty. It’s a quagmire.”
To be sure, however, the charges leveled against the Schoos went far beyond the simple spanking that for generations was an accepted method of disciplining a wayward child.
And in a wider sense, experts say, the occasional swat on the behind certainly does not belong in the same league as the chronic physical and psychological abuse that children can suffer at the hands of their parents.
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But the Schoos’ case has turned the spotlight on the entire spectrum of child discipline, focusing attention on how attitudes and practices have changed in the past two generations.
For many parents, the central question is: Where does physical discipline end and child abuse begin?
Child welfare advocates and prosecutors say there are no set guidelines, but in general, spanking has to be “hard enough to leave telltale marks or bruises” before authorities will intervene, said John Goad, Cook County child protection administrator with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
The absence of specific guidelines has created fear and confusion among many parents and given others the excuse to take violent action against children under the guise of discipline.
Whether a slap on the rear is a bruising blow, or a shake for attention becomes a case of shaken-baby syndrome depends on the force used by the parents and their ability to control themselves while punishing a child. It is not the weapon-be it a hand, a board or a belt-but how it is wielded that often determines whether a parent is charged with abuse, experts say. Authorities also weigh other factors, including the age of the child, the child’s health and the type of punishment administered.
Child abuse rates continue to escalate in Illinois and across the nation. According to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, there were 2.7 million child abuse cases reported nationwide in 1991.
In Illinois, reported child abuse and neglect fatalities nearly doubled between 1985 and 1989. In the Cook County public guardian’s office, 71 attorneys and 25 social workers handle roughly 1,000 court cases each week. Another 800 new cases of abuse and neglect are reported each month.
The burgeoning caseloads are not due to tougher laws. In fact, state statutes regarding child abuse have not changed much in the past 25 years. If anything, law enforcement officials say, routine abuse cases that may have been prosecuted a decade ago are falling by the wayside as authorities find themselves inundated with true-life horror stories.
“It’s much more difficult today, the cases are so much harder,” said Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, who blames the shift on the proliferation of drugs. “When we talk about physical abuse, we’re not talking about spanking. We’re talking heavy-duty stuff.”
Advice from experts such as Doctors Benjamin Spock and Barry Brazelton have pushed public opinion to the point that any physical discipline, from a tap to a slap, is questioned, and sometimes reported as child abuse. Yet more than half of all parents continue to rely on spanking when their kids get unruly, according to estimates of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, a Chicago-based lobbying group.
Many parents say they are increasingly self-conscious about the way they chastise their children.
Times have changed, they say, and not necessarily for the better.
“When I was a kid, people didn’t view parents as abusive if they spanked their kids. Now it’s frowned upon,” said Linda O’Malley, a Schaumburg mother of two. “Today you keep your hands off your kids at all costs. And I think there are a lot of undisciplined children out there because parents don’t place any restraints on them.”
Children’s advocates, such as Goad, say unruly children are not the problem, out-of-control parents are.
“Everyone has the experience of being in the grocery store and seeing someone whacking their kid with an umbrella,” Goad said. “Children aren’t being treated any better. It seems to me children are less valued than they used to be. … What we see today are parents that are just losing it and (they) go off on their children.”
Of course, with such a highly emotional subject there are bound to be wildly differing opinions.
Some activists, such as Graham Jeambey, executive director of the Colorado-based Victims of Child Abuse Laws, insist that courts are going overboard in interfering with the rights of parents to discipline their children as they see fit.
“Children today are coached at school and by their peers that if they don’t like something mom and dad does, tell someone, and by George, the system will come running,” said Jeambey, who says he joined VOCAL when a friend lost his family after being charged unfairly with child abuse.
“One thing the system is guilty of is ignoring the rights of the accused parents,” said Jeambey, who estimates that roughly 60 percent of the reported child abuse cases are unfounded. “The courts say they’re going to err on the side of the child and to heck with the family. And even if you’re found not guilty, you’re labeled for the rest of your life.”
But Murphy argues that the overburdened juvenile courts do not have time to chase after parents who spank. Instead, Murphy said, most of the 1,000 cases his department handles each week are virtual horror stories of children who have been beaten, raped and tortured by family members.
“Society does give people latitude (in disciplining children),” Murphy said. “And some people overly discipline (their children) and even then we don’t take people to court. You really have to cross over the line to lose your kids. And if you took away every kid whose parents gave them a beating, half the kids in Chicago would be in DCFS.”
According to state statutes, corporal punishment is acceptable as long as it is not deemed “excessive,” said Marci O’Boyle, a spokeswoman with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
Exactly what constitutes “excessive” is determined on a case by case basis, taking into consideration the type of punishment used, age and “special nature,” such as medical condition, of the child, O’Boyle said.
Spanking is usually a private affair; it is rare to see parents publicly taken to task for the way they discipline their children. And for that reason, perhaps, parents are squirming over some of the charges levied against the Schoos.
“One of the problems is, what is spanking?” said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard University Medical School psychiatrist and co-author of the book, “Raising Black Children.”
“If you ask any group of parents, it’s just stunning the range of physical force that they benignly label `spanking.’ “
While the occasional swat on the behind is not likely to cause lasting damage, Poussaint said, taking a strap to a child is rarely necessary.
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“If you have children, you’ll always find a pretext for feeling they need to be hit,” he said. “Many times parents are acting out on their own frustrations, their own anger, and using the child as a whipping block.”
Other advocates say that while discipline may be a necessary element of child rearing, the chosen method of punishment should not involve fear-especially fear of pain. Children who are spanked, they say, are taught that the only way to resolve their problems is through violence.
Jeanne Lenzer, a member of the National Child Rights Alliance, said children reared to fear their parents may be harmed for life.
“Discipline means that kids may have to take time out or be physically removed from a place where fun things are happening, say, but it shouldn’t involve threats, physical fear or degradation,” said Lenzer, whose group is led by survivors of child abuse.
“Belittling a child, whether it’s emotional or physical abuse, is devastating.”
Yet millions of Americans grew up with the switch, the paddle, the swat or the belt without resorting to violent action or complaining of personal devastation.
Bob Campbell, an investment banker who lives in Hinsdale, says he doles out the occasional whack on the backside only when his daughters, ages 3 and 5, have done something dangerous, such as running into the street.
“I don’t believe it’s effective as a form of punishment,” said Campbell, who along with his wife, Missy, recently completed a parenting course that discourages spanking.
“But there are times when a spanking is an appropriate way of sending a very vital message. I use it as punctuation,” Campbell said.