September (Web-only) 2000

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Conservative Protestant parents yell at their children less frequently than others, says a new study from Princeton University's Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. "For almost a decade, a number of scholars have claimed that conservative Protestant parenting is abusive and authoritarian," says Brad Wilcox, who coauthored the study with John P. Bartkowski. "Our findings call into question those assertions and suggest that conservative Protestant parents have a neo-traditional style of parenting that may well be perfectly fine." While evangelicals may spank more, they praise more too. Last year, Wilcox and Bartkowski made headlines with their research that evangelical families are much more egalitarian than their rhetoric indicates. "Evangelical family practice does not match evangelical family rhetoric," they said.

Meanwhile, Salim Muwakkil of In These Times writes in the Chicago Tribune that the West should stop blaming the entertainment industry for youth violence and instead blame spanking: "Cursing Hollywood is good politics, even if it is barking up the wrong tree. But there is something Americans can do that most experts say would reduce levels of interpersonal violence: Stop spanking children. … Just as men once declared their 'biblical' right to punch their wives' lights out, we cling to the primitive belief that we can assault our children whenever we deem it appropriate."

John Paulk, board chair for the ex-gay group Exodus International and Homosexuality and Gender Specialist at Focus on the Family, was spotted in Mr. P's, a gay bar in DuPont Circle, a largely gay neighborhood in Washington, ...