Editor:

To put "Parental rights becoming child's play" (Calgary Herald, June 22, 2008) -- a pro-spanking propaganda piece -- into proper perspective, one needs merely to substitute "wife" for "child" and "husband" for "parent" throughout the article. What results is the common wisdom of an earlier era:

• Reasonable chastisement of disobedient wives by their loving husbands when the occasion demands is not violence, but one of the normal ingredients of wholesome married life.

• As husbands' authority in the family is increasingly undermined, we witness the inevitable drift toward family break-down. The divorce rate is increasing. Licentiousness and alcohol use are on the rise. Some wives are even insisting on having their own personal bank accounts and shamelessly wearing trousers in public.

• It's not the government's proper role to tell husbands how to manage their marriages.

Is there any logical distinction between the legal right of parents to assault and batter their children today and the legal right of husbands to assault and batter their wives 100 years ago?

Jordan Riak
Exec. Dir., PTAVE