BellaOnline Forums Family Siblings Is Spanking Abuse?

"Spare the rod and spoil the child" is a thing of the past.
Nowadays there are laws being passed to criminalize spanking as child abuse or assault and battery. Parents can be arrested and face jail time for any form of spanking. Some parents have already been arrested when an informer calls in a "tip" and charged with assault and battery. Should spanking be criminalized and parents arrested?

This is one of those interesting topics that gets people out strongly on both sides. Usually people on the spanking side were spanked as children and (naturally) feel if they survived it that others should too.

What I've found interesting in past discussions on this topic is that the older generation is far more heavily in favor of spanking than younger people are. The younger you get in generations, the less likely they are to want to spank. They'd rather use another technique to discipline.

I myself am against spanking - and I was spanked quite a lot as a child. I always found other techniques to discipline my son or figure out what the "real issue was". Yes it takes a LOT longer to do it that way, vs just hitting.

I always felt that it was not a good thing to physically hurt a child because of unacceptable behaviour. Spanking physically hurts children and can do severe damage if one hits a child in the wrong place. Spanking is just not acceptable for any reason in my book. When you hit a child on the bottom, it is considered spanking, when you hit an adult on the bottom it is considered physical abuse...something is wrong with this.

I don't believe in spanking. I was spanked as a child and every time I was spanked I felt humiliated and unloved. That feeling stayed with me into adulthood and when I became a mother I never wanted my son to experience confused feelings during discipline. So I always used time outs, verbal discipline, or took a privilege away from him for a time. He knew he was being punished without me hitting him. I just don't think there is ever a reason for a big adult to be pounding on a small child. That's so unloving.

For those who do spank - Do you believe parents and/or grandparents should be put into the criminal system and charged? The children can and most likely will be removed from the home and put into the system if the laws criminalize spanking. I know if they had those child abuse hotlines when I was growing up, my sister would have called and had my mother put in jail if she could have gotten away with it. Mostly out of spite. Who knows where we all would have ended up.

I'm torn on this.

We don't spank - anymore I should say.

My oldes has Asperger's, and spanking would literally turn into a hitting fight, we would spank him , he would hit us - so we decided that obviously spanking was not the punishment that was going to get through to him.

Then we just got into the habit of not spanking with our other two.

But I know parents who spank, and i would not qualify what they do as abuse. And I would definitely NOT want to see their children pulled from a loving home and put into a system where they would float and could possibly wind up in a truly abusive situation.

I worked in the field of child abuse - providing play therapy for abused children, working with teen parents to prevent child abuse and supervising both statewide and national child abuse hotlines - for nearly 20 years before having my own children.

I do not know of any state in the United States that bans spanking entirely - if for no other reason than it would be too hard to enforce.

Typically, in most states, spanking is considered child abuse if it is excessive - if it leaves a mark on the child.

Many believe that spanking is excessive - period! It is often used out of anger and leads to poor role modeling when trying to teach our children how to manage their emotions. The use of force does not teach our child anything valuable about their behavior and the associated consequences.

That being said, having worked in the field prior to having my own children - I understand the pain, difficulty and frustration that the parents I worked with were experiencing far greater than ever before.