Wow. Well Said.

I can't believe I used to call myself a parent who "spanked". It never felt right to me, (unless I did it out of anger, of course), but when in my right mind, I just told my child that the Bible told me I "had" to do this. What a load of SHIT. Excuse my anger... As a child I remember telling myself, "My mom tells me to stop crying, or she'll spank my again. This makes no sense, because spanking just makes me cry more! I will never do this to my kids."
I wish I would have listened to my inner child for the first 11 years of my parenting.
I have been free of the spanking mentality for over a year now. I wish I had written down the date, so I could celebrate the anniversary.
Some people reserve "spanking" as the "last possible option"... I guess you could look at it that way.... IF your "child" is bigger than you, and happens to be physically harming you, or someone else. You might hit then. But in that case, I assume you wouldn't call it spanking. You'd call it what it hitting.
So, read on for a well articulated reason that America should outlaw "spanking". I find especially compelling the thought of hitting mentally retarded children. How sad. And yet, how much sadder is it than hitting a normal child?

I consider myself something of a constitutionalist, and for the life of
me I don't recall any section of the Constitution, or the BOR giving me
the right to hit someone else. Even if it is 'just' children.

While I can understand the urge to stand up for one's rights, I also
expect that we be abundantly clear about what a "right" is.

This particular argument, to me, seems to lead ... from our BOR ... in
the direction of objectifying children, since our BOR is very specific
about our possessions and the right to be secure in them.

Now either a child is a possession, someone else's possession
(presumably parents or other legal caretaker) or they are their own in
certain particular areas.

My understand of human rights flies directly in the face of the
"possession,

" argument ... that my child is "mine," in the sense I can
do anything with or to them that I want.

Now if I can't kill him, and I can't injure him, and I think we all
agree on these as being proscribed, what gives me, over all other human
beings, the right to hit him and give it another name to cover up my
assault?

If I hit anyone other than a child except in defense of self or other
(and I may well be required to prove in court that such a precondition
existed) I have done battery and will very likely be found not only
guilty of assault, but I may well be sued for a violation of that
person's civil rights.

I've seen many times the argument that, "well, being a child we have an
obligation to protect them and sometimes it necessary -- traffic entries
being an example -- to hit, "spank" the child to teach them to stay out
of traffic."

So if I have a person in my care of limited capacity, say
developmentally disabled, it is ethically acceptable to hit them to
teach them to stay out of traffic? If they are 18 years of age or older
I may go to jail for doing so. And that is right and moral, not just
legal.

There is, in my view and opinion, not only nothing about a child that
supports the use of the deliberate application of pain to teach (natural
consequences are an entirely different argument ... as they are
spontaneous, and spanking is not) but in fact a far stronger argument
that the deliberate use of pain is uncalled for and counter productive
based on research, just as the article points out.

So we have two strikes. One the moral question, the other the efficacy
question. The third strike is one I know of personally.

Having worked with mentally ill children I assure you, among the most
difficult, the most damaged, there was not a single child that had not
been spanked. And while some had been brutally treated, many had not.
While they were difficult children and may have been even if never
spanked, unquestionably spanking ... the use of pain by a caregiver, did
NOT lend to their mental health nor their normal development.

They spent, as we used to label it, too much time looking over their
shoulder and trying to compensate for the constant anxiety and fear that
pain was coming from a caregiver.