VIOLENCE: Petition urging Amazon to stop selling books that advocate child abuse

Latest developments: After gathering over 11,830 signatures, Amazon has still not given a response to the petition urging its CEO, Mr Jeff Bezos, to cease selling "parenting manuals" that advocate violence against children in the name of "discipline". This is despite numerous attempts to elicit a response from Amazon on the petition through both its PR and press offices.

Why the campaign? 

There are currently several “parenting manuals” available to buy on Amazon (.com and .co.uk), the world’s biggest bookseller, that advise parents to train and condition their children into obedience using rods, paddles, or other similar implements. The books advise using these methods on small children and even babies under the age of one.

One such book is To Train Up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl, in which,

• Thumping, smacking and hair pulling are promoted as a way of training a child to obey instructions. Children are compared with dogs;
• The use of a "rod" is promoted, which the authors describe as a "divine enforcer". They recommend using a metre-long branch or a belt on an older child and a smaller object on a younger child;
• They affirm that "[a]ny spanking to reinforce instruction, must cause pain."
• Also "If you have to sit on him to spank him, do not hesitate... hold the resisting child in a helpless position for several minutes, or until he is totally surrendered."
• Michael Pearl said his wife trained their daughter to stop biting her during breastfeeding by pulling on her hair: "[u]nderstand, the baby is not being punished. Just conditioned." 

Other “parenting manuals” also available to buy on Amazon include, Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp, which advocates using a rod to punish children as young as eight months, as does the disturbingly titled Don't Make Me Count to Three, by Ginger Plowman.

It is a petition urging Amazon to cease to stock parenting manuals that advise the physical abuse of children. With a petition with thousands of signatures, Amazon will be compelled to take some kind of action, even if it is to simply respond to say that it is going to continue to sell the book.  As such a high profile retailer, whatever action it takes will be newsworthy, and will raise awareness world wide of these books, and generate thinking and debate about the issue of physical violence as a parenting approach. This will then open up the question of whether such books should be allowed at all. 

To sign the petition urging Amazon to cease to stock parenting manuals that advise the physical abuse of children, click here. 

So far, the petition now has over 9,100 signatures, and numbers are constantly rising. There are several notable signatories, leading experts, campaigners and commentators on the issues of child development, corporal punishment, religious child maltreatment and violence against children. They include:

• Robert Fathman Ph.D, Clinical Psychologist, Co-Founder of the Center for Effective Discipline and the National Coalition to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools.
• Jordan Riak, Founder and Executive Director of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education. 
• Samuel Martin, biblical scholar and author of Thy Rod and Staff They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking Controversy. 
• Peter Newell, Coordinator of the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, Coordinator of the Children are Unbeatable! Alliance, and adviser to the European Network of Ombudspeople for Children. 
• Prof George W. Holden, Professor of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chair of the Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline, 2011, Dallas, TX. 
• Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment. 
• Al Crowell, Board member of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education for ten years, Co-author of pamphlet The Nonviolent Christian Parent: Raising Children with Love, Limits, and Wisdom. 
• Margaret Sims, Professor of Early Childhood, University of New England, NSW, Australia. 
• Frank Schaeffer, author, film director, screenwriter, activist: www.frankschaeffer.com. 
• Elizabeth Gershoff, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas at Austin. 
• Michael Goldfield, Child Advocate and Board member of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education.
• Margarita Cala, M.D., Attending Psychiatrist, NYU School of Medicine. 
• James C. Talbot, author of The Road to Positive Discipline, A Parent's Guide. 
• Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, Associate Professor, University of Michigan School of Social Work, author of extensive research on corporal punishment. 
•  Hermana Linda, Campaigner, whynottrainachild.com. 

To sign the petition urging Amazon to cease to stock parenting manuals that advise the physical abuse of children, click here.