Hopefully this doesn't offend anyone ... it's about spanking.

I preface this post by saying, if you believe in spanking, don't read this. It's not meant to offend anyone, it's my own personal views on spanking children.

Last night in my Juvenile Law class we had a very interesting discussion. It was about corporal punishment and whether or not there should be a law that a bans corporal punishment, or spanking your child. Hopefully this post does not offend anyone, but here's my take of the discussion that occurred ...

I was overwhelmed by the number of people who were against a law that banned spanking. Not everyone in the class spoke out, but the majority of students were pro-spanking, or they were not for spanking themselves, but they did not want to tell other people that they couldn't spank their child.

As someone who is about to become a mother I found this discussion incredibly interesting ... I was not raised with spankings as a child, so I have never thought about spanking my own children. I felt naive as I sat and listened to my classmates rationals about why spanking is okay ...I assumed that being in a law class most students would agree with me, I was very wrong.

One student felt that creating a law would not change behavior, to which I thought in my mind, why are you in law school? Another student felt like if his child ran across the street he should be able to teach him that it's not okay without the risk of being turned over to CPS. Others said that it's a cultural thing and that you can't tell a culture that it's not okay to do something ... they are entitled to their opinions and I kept my mouth shut (mostly because I had to pee and I wanted class to end early and also because I was so shocked and amazed at what some people were saying).

The whole time this discussion is going on books were being passed around the classroom. The books contained very graphic photos of children who were sexually assaulted or who were beaten by their parents. The pictures were so disturbing that some people wouldn't look at them and just continued to pass them along. Please don't take my statements to mean that people who spank their children are on the same level as people who sexually assault or who beat their children, but the discourse among my classmates was still shocking to me. Where do we draw the line?

The thing that I have a hard time with is this ... nowhere else in our lives is it okay to hit someone, so just because we call this "spanking" how is it different? I'm not a parent yet, so I can't say that I fully understand any of this, but it was thought provoking ... my mom told me the story of the one time she spanked me. I guess I turned to her and I said "Don't hit me! If I can't you, you can't hit me." And she said she never was able to do it again. Doesn't that make sense though? I wonder as a parent, how am I going to teach my child right from wrong? What will my methods be?

My professor, who is an expert on child abuse, made some interesting statements. While a law that banned spanking might be hard to enforce immediately, laws can change people's perspectives over time. He used the example of segregation and how people once believed that there would never be integration and look at where we are now. He talked about how at one time many people believed that it was okay for husbands to beat their wives ... maybe 10 or 15 years from now we will look back and be shocked that people thought it was okay to "spank" their children.

From a scientific perspective, the professor also mentioned that the American Academy of Pediatrics has also come out against corporal punishment saying that is ineffective. Since I am not writing a scientific article nor am I looking to get this published anywhere, I will leave it at that.

I believe that teaching people new approaches to correcting misbehavior would be a very challenging task! It would be hard to implement and telling people that one behavior is not okay without educating them as to why and providing them with resources would be irresponsible! I openly admit that I am not an expert that I don't have the answers, I would just prefer to live in a place where hitting of any kind was never involved. I'm hopeful and incredibly naive ...