I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen a kid acting shitty in a public place and their shitty parent wasn’t doing anything about it. Why are these parents so shitty? Is it because they were so busy worrying about their careers that when a kid plopped out they didn’t know what to do? Hardly likely, since many of the useless parents I see aren’t successful; they’re some mother on welfare.

There is no class discrimination in crappy parenting. Parents from all sides of the financial spectrum suck. My theory—liberalism is to blame. Parents won’t tell their kid to shut up because they have this pussyfooting modern view of how telling their kids off means they don’t love them.

Somehow, loving your child has turned in to letting it do whatever it wants because telling it “NO” would be a crime against love. It’s the soft approach that is ruining children today. Every time I have encountered or heard about problematic youngsters in my area, their background was always the same. They came from a broken home where their parent/s were too busy arguing, drinking, gambling, or doing drugs to care about what their child was doing. Many statistics will show that broken homes turn children to crime.

A strict home is not a militant one. Getting a spanking or a clip around the ear is not the same as being repeatedly beaten over the head or thrown down a flight of stairs. The older generation reminds us of how they used to get a belt to the butt if they did something wrong and how it did them no harm. In most cases they’re right. They turned into well-mannered, respectful citizens.

People who are against hitting children see no compromise in the issue. You can’t touch them, period. If you do, they should take your kids away. It’s gone beyond that, though. As a stranger, you can’t even tell a noisy child to quiet down. Should you be sitting on public transportation and see a child yelling in anger with its mother sitting there looking exhausted, you wouldn’t dare say anything.

In these types of situations it’s often hard not to say, “Hey lady, your kid isn’t listening to you. He’s gonna keep kicking the seat of the man in front no matter how many times you whisper in his ear about how he shouldn’t. You know why those whispers and talks you give him don’t work? BECAUSE HE’S FOUR YEARS OLD!”

When we’re allowed to get away with things, we exploit that freedom. It’s a basic human instinct. We knew it when we were kids and we know it now. If you’re taught from an early age that you won’t be able to manipulate, then you stop doing it.

It’s time for modern-day parents to understand that a little discipline doesn’t hurt. Not only that, your kid will thank you for it later in life and probably turn out to be a pretty decent human being.