NOT child abuse

Headlines meet poetry:

Today my A.P. English students and I were discussing a favorite poem, "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. The poem is as follows:

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

While some of the imagery and diction, especially towards the end of the poem, seem to evoke disturbing emotions, the poem is NOT about child abuse. It is true that this is an unsettling situation, but there is also love and fond remembrance and no indication that the child is being beaten. One of my students said, "I still think that's child abuse." And another student responded, "Well, look at the date. This was written in the '40s. Right NOW people think that's child abuse, because you can't even slightly SPANK your child anymore!"

After this discussion today, I read an article on MSN about the little boy, David, whose dad filmed him totally out of it as he returns from a dental surgery. I think it's hilarious! It's not exploitative or abusive, but the parents have gone on national television defending their decision to film him (because the mom was at work and not with him for the surgery or the aftermath) and then post it (because friends requested to see it and then it went viral),because people have reacted so violently with their criticism of these parents. I am annoyed with society and our allowing certain behaviors and disrespect to go unchecked by our youth, while scrutinizing and over-analyzing any adult-child interactions to death.