Dr Esmond Birnie, MLA, is probably a reasonable man, suggests Medb Ruane. "He was probably very disturbed at the worldwide television images showing Belfast children under threat from adults in their own neighbourhoods, just before Christmas - little girls crying while grown-ups shouted at them; boys at the edge of manhood reminded of their vulnerability and taken home from school in the back of a police van."
Yet Dr Birnie, and his fellow Assembly members, forgot those children last Tuesday, and with them many young Ulstermen and women whose fates lie in the Assembly's hands. The Assembly members seem to have done so almost absent-mindedly and, of course, they said they did so "in a loving manner", with the children's best interests at heart.
"I want to defend the human rights of those families who wish to practise moderate physical chastisement," Dr Birnie proclaimed in the midst of a discussion about banning parents from smacking their children. Scotland had recently introduced a limited measure for children under three.
"A large lobby of people believe that they have a right to apply a certain level of discipline to their children as part of their Christian faith," his colleague Peter Weir added. "Any changes to the current law would discriminate against them."
The idea that authority needs physical force to assert itself is as suspect as the notion that hitting your own children is a human right. Neither is mentioned in the Belfast Agreement nor in any of the legislation flowing from it.
And Christianity, if you take the words of Jesus rather than an Old Testament patriarch, is supposed to be about turning the other cheek while keeping any eye on justice. Christ put children at the heart of things.
IF the war against terrorism and sectarianism is supposed to conquer hearts and minds, then the Assembly's debate about smacking may be the nail for want of which the war is lost. Northern Ireland's children are already unique in many ways. The schools in Martin McGuinness's care remain the only ones in Europe where corporal punishment is allowed by law. Anywhere else, the practice is considered barbaric.
But the Assembly refused by a small majority to allow their discussion be informed by wider European evidence learned in the great big world outside.
No child welcomes humiliation. It's never a positive experience, at any age. Lack of respect engenders lack of respect, wherever it takes place. Yet even when its children are in crisis, Ulster prefers to say No.
The determination to interpret conflict through the eyes of parents and politicians, rather than through the eyes of the child, suggests that a majority of the Assembly are blinded not only to the links between home and community, but to the links between how parents treat their children, and how those children grow up to treat others who disagree with them.
Cynics might say the discussion tells more about voting allegiances within the Assembly than about how MLAs really view children. No doubt the MLAs are all deeply concerned parents who worry about the world their children will inherit.
But if every measure favouring children is seen as a contest between old rivalries for political gain, then the sights that went worldwide on television are just as likely to happen again.
"What is the definition of a smack?" David Ervine asked.
"I would like to know the weight of a smack and the velocity of the movement of the arm. What is the difference between a proper smack and an improper smack? Our children should be taught not to use violence in the hope that they will not use violence as adults. We have choices to make. We may not cure the ills of our society in one day, one week or one month, but we can lay down markers and an ethos. We can do that with our children before they get the opportunity to become, perhaps, polluted by the society that we live in," Mr Ervine observed.
UNLESS children really are their parents' property, born of strict bloodlines and gene pools into a predestined life, nothing justifies the political habit of putting children last.
Monica McWilliams said that "it was once acceptable to hit a woman with a stick that was no thicker than a person's thumb, hence the phrase, 'rule of thumb'. That was where the ecclesiastical courts started their rulings. They declared that it was perfectly acceptable to hit a woman in the house, providing that it was not too damaging. Women, rightly, started to ask what was considered damaging and what could be construed as emotional or physical abuse. Therefore, the law began to change."
Of course children need boundaries. They need them for their own sake as much as for everyone else.
Down south in the global village, parents can legally physically punish their children too, and no politician thinks of giving a lead.
But in a territory where children are bullied by adults on their way to school, where women still suffer domestic violence at rates higher than anywhere else on the two islands, despite law, elected representatives can hardly afford to be so complacent, simply for the want of a nail.