The majority of Salon commentators seem to be pretty non-traditional. Me too. I love football, and I am the primary cook in the extended family. Being dual citizen and all, I do two Thanksgivings and Christmas, three turkeys in three months, and I don't even really like turkey much. But even when I am away, like I will be at Christmas, it will be me cooking the bird and most of the meal, at my brother's house.

It takes some careful planning to cook and still catch most of the football, but it can be done.

As for the gifts for the other gender thing, one thing I enjoy every holiday season is the advertising that plays on this. Right now, there is a marked increase in electric shaver and power tool ads. In the three weeks before Christmas, you always see a huge increase in chocolate, perfume, and jewelry ads. Advertisers are playing to the gender roles and mysteries, so you'd think there is some basis for them.

Very slick site, that probably cost a lot of money. Didn't long to stumble into the Lifer propaganda though.

On one hand, at least they are trying to persuade women not to have abortions, rather than trying to forbid it through criminalization. And perhaps they are even offering a bit of support of a sort to women who have kept their babies, always the Lifers' weak area.

But. BUT.

I call them women because they are having babies. But they are also children, and advertising to children is troubling at the best of times, and in the case of major life affecting decisions, truth & trust starts becoming pretty important. I have teenage daughters, who do surf the web quite a bit, and the thought of them stumbling into something like this sends shivers down my spine.

I've teen moms that had a lot of support from their family that did ok. (Carol, teens that have to use the services of a group home likely have other issues that would make success at parenting problematic.) One is a cousin (got pregant at 15), whose child is now a teen, and the other my sister-in-law (16), whose youngest just graduated university. Both support Choice, both literally and politically. If my daughter got pregnant, I would far rather she talked to her aunt or cousin than look at shit like this. She'd find out how hard it really is.

This issue keeps coming up again and again. And it shouldn't, at least hereabouts the current laws against child abuse would pretty effectively cover horrific corporal punishment, which is the poster-child trotted out all the time, but is not what we are talking about.

Basically, it boils down to "is it ever ok for a parent to inflict physical pain rather than psychological pain" in the course of parenting?

My take on it was the same as my mom's: children under 5 or so really don't have much intellectual concept of consequence, and are frankly pretty hard to embarrass or shame. So if they for instance insist on pulling the safety plugs out of electrical outlets, sucking on them, and then sticking them back in, a little infliction of physical pain on the hand seems a lot less harmless than either letting them get an electrical shock, or spending your every moment watching them like a hawk.

Effective parenting is not doctrinaire, and should not be micromanaged.The laws are already on the books; new laws always creep, and badly; and ideology is a bad basis for criminal law.

Exactly right.

Criminalizing something is not a symbolic act that will encourage people to behave better. Rather, it gives the state a tool to tazer people over traffic tickets, put people in jail for using medicinal herbs, and prosecute people for following do not resuscitate orders.

Good idea, bad law.

If you have children, you know that basically, they are little psychopathic barbarians. Your job as a parent is to civilize them. Something like being a drill sargent at boot camp. That means you have to communicate with them, in a language they understand.

Sometimes, at certain ages, the language they understand is pain. At other ages it is humiliation and shame. There are a lot of ways to administer pain, humiliation, and shame, and one of them is corporal punishment. But there are lots of others, and let's not kid ourselves about what we are doing, have to do, sometimes, as parents. Consciously administering pain (physical or mental), humiliation, and shame, I mean. It is called Consequences, Cause and Effect, and is a very important lesson every human being has to learn, and our job as parents is to teach it.

But yeah, I don't think the use of a weapon is appropriate, ever.

I remember the last time I got it from my dad, he dragged out the old (true) prognostication: "this is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you" and thinking to myself, "ok, howabout you bend over my knee then, I'm willing to take the 'greater' pain" but of course, in the situation, I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. In the event, it was pretty perfunctory.

What precisely is the value added in vblogging? Aside from the hottness of the vblogger, nothing at all. So it doesn't seem all that feminist to me. But then I'm an old fogie.

Please drop it.

Some loser guys are getting hosed by some scantily clad women, and this is a women's issue? Loser guys getting hosed by scantily clad women is about as old as Madison Avenue. Where's the women's issue here?