Crying to sleep and children's rights

I feel in this country Plunket is one of the lead offenders to children rights or even parents rights. This is what I believe is bringing out society down...baby training at its best (worst).

This is why I question do we really need Plunket - Maybe not in its current form.

The child gets a smack or a belt round the ears and it cries…but that ok isn't it?
Well hey Plunket told us that it is ok for a baby to cry. They teach us this new method called controlled crying (but many Plunket nurses are still in favor of the cry it out method).
So for the uneducated, unsure, new, young parent and the child that has been raised to feel no empathy (who is now a parent - see my post on empathy) what's one more whack one more smack.
For a country who feels that we should be able to smack our children and oppose the Anti Smacking Law maybe Plunket should be looking at other ways to teach our children.

This is from Rebecca who writes for Running with Sizzors

"...We've had a couple of Plunket visits with two different nurses now; they've been pretty much a non-event so far! The first one (at 6 weeks) didn't even ask what we'd been doing up till that point, but told me I needed to start a bedtime routine of 5min screaming / cuddle / 5min screaming / cuddle/ 5min screaming / cuddle. She offered to 'support me' while I put him down to scream in his bed right then (although he'd only just woken up, was only half way through his feed and I hadn't changed his nappy yet! She didn't ask if he was ready for bed or even if I was ok with that method!) I just said no thanks, we're happy to keep putting him to sleep the way we usually do (without the screaming part). I got a mini-lecture about forming bad habits etc, but sheesh- he's our child! I don't have anything more important to do than take care of him, and if we have to cuddle him to sleep and let him sleep with us for a few years it's fine!
So it was all a pretty weird experience, if I'd taken her advice it would have tipped all our little routines on their head and goodness knows what chaos we'd be dealing with now!..."