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Emile comments on Our House, My Rules - Less Wrong
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"But you wouldn't be hearing this "I'm higher than you in the pecking order and don't you dare forget it" attitude that is so very common."
The human race is, essentially, a species of upgraded monkeys, and there is (so far as I can see) no way to have two large groups of people, one of which strictly dominates the other, without this particular monkey behavior being ubiquitous. This holds true even when the child, in some sense, has higher utility (eg., when the parents would sacrifice their lives for their child's life, as parents often do). The only real alternative is to give children as a whole higher status, by, say, rewriting the laws so that children are not essentially their parent's property.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
The system is very, very clearly broken. If a parent wants to (for whatever reason), it is quite easy for them to abuse their child enough to give them shell shock, without there ever being any chance of a court prosecuting them. See, eg., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_Bay.
That's what I what I told my wife when she got the idea that she should be allowed out of the kitchen.
It should be clear this is intended only as an argumentum ad absurdum. (Because there is no way I'm willingly placing myself at the mercy of whatever laws happen to be politicked into marriage already or at any time in the duration of the contract in question. That's just crazy.)