Before you start yelling at me, please note that I did not make the statement about children requiring a measured smack. The quote comes from a Boston Herald story about proposed legislation in Massachusetts to ban corporal punishment, including the culturally-accepted parents' right to physically discipline their own children. Evelyn Reilly, director of public policy for the Massachusetts Family Institute, urged committee members to do nothing, saying “many” kids “require a measured smack on the behind.”

"I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck," Tina says. "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old - with or without mental problems - it is absolutely vile.” (Tina Meier to The St. Charles Journal, regarding what happened to her daughter, Megan Taylor Meier) Tina and Ron Meier of O'Fallon, Mo., mourn their daughter, Megan. In 2006, while her mother prepared family dinner, Megan hung herself with a belt in her bedroom closet after being tormented on MySpace, the victim of cyberbullying and a prank so heinous that it's turned some bloggers and Net readers into a "cyber lynch mob."

In what is perhaps the most awkwardly-titled article I've seen recently, today it was announced that Abuse risk seen worse as families change. In spite of the fact that I had to read that multiple times to figure out what it meant, the point that unfolds is this: Children are safest raised in a household with two biological or adoptive parents, vs. being raised by a single parent, or in a step-parent or cohabitation situation.