Courts should let parents do their duty -- and pry

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Robert L. Jamieson Jr.

Monday, February 7, 2005

Courts should let parents do their duty -- and pry

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

Those words of wisdom from the Bible offer parents guidance on how a healthy spanking can at times be the perfect disciplinary tool to handle a hellion of a kid.

I'd like to add another rule: Parents who do not snoop become moot.

Such thinking, however, flies in the face of the eminent judges on the Washington State Supreme Court.

The justices recently ruled that a mother violated our state's privacy law by eavesdropping on her daughter's conversation.

Once again, the law is breaking down the doors of our homes to impose state-sanctioned silliness.

Call it home-invasion crockery -- an assault on parents who already have a hard time raising kids without the government interfering. The last thing parents need is for the courts to confer rights on kids that kids really should not have.

When it comes to young people -- who don't pay rent and who rely on Mom and Dad for food and clothes -- privacy in the home isn't a right.

It is a privilege.

Of course, some privacy advocates would take umbrage with that. They hold on to quixotic notions that do not conform to the realities of raising young people in the 21st century.

The court's ruling could give pause to parents who overhear a conversation about plans for a Columbine type of attack in a school. It could cool parents from taking measures that might identify problems with their kids or their kids' friends, including thoughts of suicide or the abuse of drugs and alcohol.

It could deter them from doing what parents need to do: remain involved in their kids' lives until their kids become independent and self-sufficient adults.

If kids don't like it, that is tough.

There's the door.

If the kids do walk out, the wise minds on the Supreme Court can deal with them -- after they've shot up their school, gotten in a drunken-driving wreck or fallen into a legal and criminal morass that might have been prevented by the kind of parental involvement the courts are, intended or not, discouraging.

Legal sense here amounts to nonsense.

Thankfully, some wiser minds are trying to restore a bit of sanity.

A proposed measure went before the House Judiciary Committee last week. House Bill 1178 would allow parents to eavesdrop on their children's phone conversations or intercept their mail. State Sen. Pam Roach, a Republican from Sumner, introduced a similar bill. Senate Bill 5081 says it would not be illegal for parents or legal guardians to monitor their kids' phone conversations.

The public policy ripples from the court's decision are enough to make parents throw up their hands.

Parents are getting a mixed message.

On the one hand, society expects moms and dads to do all they can to protect their children.

For example, it seems as if the law doesn't mind if parents use spy software to nab pedophiles preying on kids in chat rooms.

On the other hand, parents are now supposed to plug their ears if they pick up the phone and overhear Johnny or Janie discussing something unseemly or something that jeopardizes public safety.

The issue mushroomed late last year, after the Supreme Court ruled that a mother's testimony against her daughter's friend should not have been admitted in court because it was based on an intercepted conversation.

Carmen Dixon of Friday Harbor listened in as her teenage daughter spoke to a friend -- a suspect in a robbery -- who admitted knowing where a stolen purse was. The friend was later convicted for the robbery, in which an elderly lady was cruelly knocked down.

But state law requires consent from all parties before a conversation can be recorded or intercepted. So, the justices ordered a new trial for the friend of Dixon's daughter.

In the extreme, the court ruling could turn parents into criminals for snooping and render them powerless -- fears Roach expressed. "The last thing you want is your own child complaining that you're breaking the law," The Associated Press quoted Roach as saying. "They shouldn't have that kind of leverage over parents' ability to parent."

A more likely effect is that the courts and police would be prohibited from using results yielded from what a parent may have intercepted or overheard.

All of this brings me back to sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Some folks believe that any form of corporal punishment is tantamount to child abuse.

In truth, a spanking -- if done sparingly, out of love and applied to the fleshy part of the rump -- teaches kids to respect authority and rules. If parents do not instill those lessons when kids are growing up, the jail warden will be only happy to do so later.

The same thing holds true for so-called "snooping."

It is not a case of parents abusing authority. It is a common sense matter of parents doing what parents must -- maintaining vigilance in a crazy world. Failure to do so would not only make parents irrelevant in their kids' lives. It would also make them derelict of their parental duty.

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com

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