I would have gone to jail

A story about a child taken from his parents because the parents slapped the crying child boils my blood. Whether or not you believe in corporal punishment for children, or whether or not you think the child was too young to be spanked is not the issue here. What is at issue here is the question of where a flight attendant, as an employee of a private company, gets the power to take a child from a parent. I can assure you that if a flight attendant had done the same to me, the plane would have made an emergency landing to take me to jail and the flying waitress to the hospital.

In the end, a flight attendant is an airborne waitress with delusions of grandeur, and has no police power at all. Touch me, touch my child, or touch my wife and I will use whatever force is required to stop that contact.

To those angry flying waiters and waitresses who will surely leave nasty comments, spare me. The fact that you are responsible for assisting passengers in the event of a crash does not give you any more authority to use force to enforce law than I have, so save your breath and your bandwidth.