Author Catherynne Valente started a petition asking Amazon to remove the horrifying (and horrifyingly-titled) fundamentalist parenting book To Train Up a Child.

According to Ryan Britt of Fatherly, Amazon is selling a pro-child abuse book… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

A fundamentalist text published in 1994 that claims to be a parenting book — and actively encourages child abuse — is something you can easily buy on Amazon. The book in question, To Train Up a Child, doles out such horrific parenting advice as beating children and whipping young infants with blankets all under the guise of teaching “discipline.” And now, some parents have had enough.

Over the weekend, best-selling author (and parent) Catherynne Valente drew attention to a petition to ban To Raise Up a Child from being sold on certain websites. Because teachings from the book have been linked to at least three deaths and one murder conviction, it makes sense why parents would be horrified to know it’s so readily available.

Some might say that Amazon is a business and it can sell anything it wants, but it’s relevant to note that Valente is a novelist and no stranger to issues of censorship. The difference between free speech and dangerous speech is fairly clear. In a world in which parents are concerned about child safety of certain virtual platforms — like YouTube and Facebook — it seems obvious that many parents would equally concerned about real, tangible books in the world that encourage their peers to beat children with plastic tubes. To put it another way, if Facebook can remove harmful anti-vax propaganda, Amazon can probably get rid of this scary book, right?

Read full post on Fatherly

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