{"id":161,"date":"2009-09-04T08:43:36","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T08:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html"},"modified":"2009-09-04T08:43:36","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T08:43:36","slug":"man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html","title":{"rendered":"Man Irritated by Crying Toddler in Wal-Mart, Slaps Her"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just have to say, completely unrelated to ethics or dilemmas, thank<br \/>\nyou Virgin America, for in-flight internet. I love multi-tasking a<br \/>\n5-hour journey and work! (I&#8217;m completely serious).<\/p>\n<p>Now, on to more interesting things. Talk about an ethical fail &#8211; this<br \/>\nGeorgia man was arrested on Monday for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2009\/CRIME\/09\/02\/georgia.tot.slapped\/index.html\">disciplining a crying toddler<br \/>\nwith a few smacks to the face<\/a>. The kicker &#8211; <i>it wasn&#8217;t his child<\/i>. In<br \/>\nfact, he was a complete stranger to the child and mother.<\/p>\n<p>First, Roger Stephens apparently approached the child&#8217;s mother in<br \/>\nWal-Mart and told her, &#8220;If you don&#8217;t shut the baby up, I will shut her<br \/>\nup for you.&#8221; Yep, fail #1, Mr. Stephens, for threatening a mother and<br \/>\nchild because the kid was doing what children often tend to do-cry,<br \/>\nwhine, make lots of noise.<\/p>\n<p>Next, when Stephens encountered the still-wailing child in another<br \/>\naisle, he decided to make good on his threat. He allegedly slapped the<br \/>\ntoddler on the face &#8211; not just once. Four to five times, according to<br \/>\npolice. BIG ethical fail, and in my opinion, child abuse. But to round<br \/>\nthings off, let&#8217;s end with ethical fail #3, the closing taunt: &#8220;See, I<br \/>\ntold you I would shut her up.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The authorities agree with the child abuse, as Stephens has been<br \/>\ncharged with first-degree cruelty to children. I only hope it sticks.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m of the no-spanking, no physical-discipline school of thought,<br \/>\nthough I don&#8217;t believe it is necessarily child abuse when the <i>actual<\/i><br \/>\nparent uses this method. <\/p>\n<p>So am I a hypocrite for hoping this man serves some type of jail-time?<br \/>\nShould he be considered a violent offender for doing what I&#8217;m sure many<br \/>\nparents have done (which is, of course, a whole other discussion &#8211; what<br \/>\ncrosses the line of appropriate parental discipline)? Or should he<br \/>\nmerely receive counseling for not realizing that it was not his place<br \/>\nto take this child&#8217;s discipline into his own hands?<\/p>\n<p><b><br \/>\nWhat do you think?<\/p>\n<p><\/b><strong>Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EverydayEthics\">follow us on&nbsp;Twitter<\/a>!<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just have to say, completely unrelated to ethics or dilemmas, thank you Virgin America, for in-flight internet. I love multi-tasking a 5-hour journey and work! (I&#8217;m completely serious). Now, on to more interesting things. Talk about an ethical fail &#8211; this Georgia man was arrested on Monday for disciplining a crying toddler with a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16,36,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-padmini-mangunta","category-legal-ethics","category-news","category-parenting-responsibility"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Man Irritated by Crying Toddler in Wal-Mart, Slaps Her - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Man Irritated by Crying Toddler in Wal-Mart, Slaps Her - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I just have to say, completely unrelated to ethics or dilemmas, thank you Virgin America, for in-flight internet. I love multi-tasking a 5-hour journey and work! (I&#8217;m completely serious). Now, on to more interesting things. 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I love multi-tasking a 5-hour journey and work! (I&#8217;m completely serious). Now, on to more interesting things. Talk about an ethical fail &#8211; this Georgia man was arrested on Monday for disciplining a crying toddler with a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html","og_site_name":"Everyday Ethics","article_published_time":"2009-09-04T08:43:36+00:00","author":"Padmini Mangunta","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html","name":"Man Irritated by Crying Toddler in Wal-Mart, Slaps Her - Everyday Ethics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-09-04T08:43:36+00:00","dateModified":"2009-09-04T08:43:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#\/schema\/person\/f3ed03a01300bae11302f037d0eb91f1"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/09\/man-irritated-by-crying-toddler-in-wal-mart-slaps-her.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Man Irritated by Crying Toddler in Wal-Mart, Slaps Her"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/","name":"Everyday Ethics","description":"Moral Ethics Blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#\/schema\/person\/f3ed03a01300bae11302f037d0eb91f1","name":"Padmini Mangunta","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/5a4\/5a49e4a981c7ab22c6c140c90fe5d812x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/5a4\/5a49e4a981c7ab22c6c140c90fe5d812x96.jpg","caption":"Padmini Mangunta"},"description":"Padmini Mangunta is a writer and editor with a Journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. In addition to writing for a various print and online publications, such as Parenting Magazine and iVillage, she was the Website Manager for the Henry Street Settlement, a social services and arts organization serving Manhattan's Lower East Side. Most recently, she worked on the Thai-Myanmar border as a writer for the Burma Human Rights Yearbook. Her curiosity about human nature, coupled with duel streaks of idealism and Midwestern pragmatism, developed into an ongoing discussion with friends, family and strangers on ethical quandaries. When she's not asking \"Why?\" you might have trouble finding her, as her hobbies include nosing around used bookstores, exploring the world (near and far), meeting new people and occasionally twiddling her thumbs while daydreaming.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/pmangunta"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}