Ask the Little Bald Bastard

Some things disturb me more than others.
  Granted, the list of things that bother me, even single-spaced and in a very small font, would likely fill a mid-size athletic stadium. There are some items, though, that would definitely warrant a bullet or boldfaced type or something. One of those standout entries is definitely "being used by a parent as a tool of discipline."
  I'm sure you're tired of hearing about how I work in a bookstore, but we're trying to keep this thing relatively stranger-friendly, on the off chance that someone I don't know has wandered in off the street and has gotten this far without wandering out again, clutching a pair of bleeding eyeballs and screaming for an ambulance or a mercy shooting. (Ask the Little Bald Bastard, brought to you in fabulous Run-On-Vision!) At work, I am quite frequently presented with challenging young people. Parenting appears, to my untrained eye, to be getting more indulgent these days, and the frequency of tantrums and disruptive behavior seems to be on the rise. I usually welcome parental intercession, but I dislike being used as a symbol of said discipline.
  The child was climbing on a shelf. Or chewing on a book. Or heading for the exit with a book that she didn't realize wasn't yet paid for. Or something. I don't remember clearly what the infraction was. What I do remember is the child's older male escort (who I assumed was her father) telling his (hopefully) offspring that "the man is going to beat your butt." By "the man," he meant me. I don't exactly know what he meant by "beat your butt," but I'm guessing that it wasn't a euphemism for "buy you ice cream."
  I wanted to believe that this pass-the-bad-guy-mask was better than nothing, but I couldn't do it. Ignoring the question of "butt-beating" as an appropriate child-rearing tactic for the moment, what if I hadn't been in sight? Would he have invoked a phantom "man," with whom to threaten his daughter with corporal punishment? Or would her absent mother have been made the scapegoat? Ooh, maybe it would have been God in the role of butt-beater, which is essentially the part he's been playing in some capacity for thousands of years. Or, would he have sucked up his reluctance and actually relied on his own authority to correct his child's behavior?
  The answer is, of course, that I don't know. (And neither do you, smartie!) Since I'll never see the family in question again, it's a rhetorical question. Still, I can't help but wonder, and my feeling is that he would have passed the butt-beater-buck to something, corporeal or not. From my split-second observation, I suspect that this man, like a lot of parents, dislikes the idea of being the bad guy in a disciplinary situation, so he made me his convenient bogeyman.
  I've voluntarily opted out of the child-rearing game, so I try not to offer advice on the topic. Yet, I am compelled to point out that it is impossible to raise a child right without occasionally making them do things they don't want to do. My belief is that indulging a child's every whim, or chickening out of your role as disciplinarian, is a sure way to raise self-absorbed anti-socialites.
  Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe it's the hormones in the beef or something.