Hitting back on California spanking ban

Perhaps the first thing Emily Bazelon forgot in her January 25, 2006, Slate article, "Hitting Bottom," http://www.slate.com/id/2158310 is that, when your subtitle reads, "Why America should outlaw spanking," it might be a good idea to reference sources that actually suggest spanking children is...you know...bad.

Bazelon's review of the available literature is dominated by UC-Berkeley psychologist Diana Baumrind whose longitudinal study (the reason for the small control group that troubles Bazelon) found that misbehavior in preschoolers was more predictive of later misbehavior than whether or not the child was spanked. Baumrind herself opposes the proposed spanking ban in California that prompted Bazelon to write the Slate article in the first place.

But, having worked in child protective services for more than a decade, I would suggest there are more important reasons for opposing the bill introduced by California assemblywoman Sally Lieber which would outlaw spanking children under the age of four.

Lacking support from the social sciences, Bazelon cites 19 countries that ban corporal punishment, including Canada, Israel, and a good portion of Europe, with particular emphasis on Sweden, which saw a precipitous - if entirely tautological - drop in spanking after passing a similar ban in 1979.

Setting aside that widespread obedience of a law is not alone an argument in its favor, childrearing practices are, by definition, cultural. Whatever laws a state may enact to protect children from mistreatment, there's still no One Right Way to raise children, as if they were being manufactured on an assembly line.

Bazelon turns up her nose at "forc[ing] judges to referee what's reasonable and what's not," but that is, after all, their job and it's this kind of deliberation that allows the courts to balance child safety with the particular circumstances of an individual family.

So, now we've swapped idealistic scenarios - my Judge-as-Wise-Arbiter for Bazelon's liberal use of time-outs. But it's the murkier real world where a spanking ban could get troublesome.

Bazelon paraphrases a United Nations report which suggests "'The de minimis principle-that the law does not concern itself with trivial matters' will keep minor assaults on children out of court."

This is unrealistic. Minor assaults on children are already in the courts, if for no other reason than that courts concern themselves with specific facts and discrete events that may or may not be indicative of long-standing patterns or more severe incidences that can't be sufficiently proven. Bazelon assures us that a spanking ban would not drag every parent into court - and she's right, but it would define quite a lot of parents as child abusers.

One can only hope it's hyperbole when Bazelon asks, "Who should we worry about more: The well-intentioned parent who smacks a child's bottom and gets hauled off to court, or the kid who keeps getting pounded because the cops can't find a bruise?"

I suppose it was inevitable that the idea of pre-emptive justice would eventually find its way into child welfare. After all, who cares if a few innocent parents lose their kids as long as we net a few child abusers who didn't leave behind the evidence required by a justice system that (how passe!) affords rights to the accused? You care more about protecting children, don't you? Well, don't you??

Perhaps the most dismaying effect of a spanking ban would be that serious and evidence-based incidents of child abuse would be lost in a flood of mandated calls reporting every paddled bottom to the authorities. Bazelon seems to be hoping that this would result in a climate that regards spanking as "socially unacceptable," but the law is a blunt tool for shaping cultural attitudes. If spanking is legally defined as child abuse, every one of those calls will require investigation and intervention. And, lacking evidence for the kind of spanks that are presently within the realm of non-abusive discipline, woe to the hapless parent who tells investigators the truth!

There's certainly room in child welfare for differences and debate, but the tone of "Hitting Bottom" is antagonistic and insincere. Bazelon doesn't go quite so far as to label her opponents libertine child abusers, but she might as well have ("More government intrusion, and for what-to spare kids a few swats?...Why, though, are we so eager to retain the right to hit our kids?").

This attitude of "you're either with us or you're with the child abusers" isn't enhanced by melodramatic shorthand like comparing the US to Korea, which is not only exaggerated to the point of falsehood (according to an October 1999 directive from the Education Ministry, Korean children are routinely beaten with broom handles, hockey sticks, shoes, belts, and books), but supplants one negative association for another (those dirty Koreans not only have The Bomb, but they beat their kids too!) It's not clear how this kind of rhetoric advances Bazelon's point.

The proposed spanking ban is misguided on every level. Child abuse laws cannot (and should not) be created to proscribe ideal childrearing practices; rather, they prohibit evidence-based behaviors that cause tangible harm. They also instigate court proceedings, family disruption, and permanent records that can dog the accused in future endeavors (imagine trying to pass a pre-employment background check once swatting your kid's behind is officially regarded as abuse). The child welfare system is already overwhelmed and lacks the resources to effectively protect children from adult behavior that is much more obviously harmful.

According to Bazelon, polls show only 23 percent support for the spanking ban. For once, the majority is right.

Response to reader comments:

Each state in the US defines "child abuse" statutorily. There are some differences among the states, but the greater difference is in the administrative and court applications of the system rather than in those governing statutes.

And "tangible harm" is an important principle, though not a universal one. It's generally the measurement for physical abuse -- spanking that leaves bruises, welts, or open wounds would be considered abuse in most states, while spanking that doesn't leave injuries generally would not be.

Other categories are more difficult to define. "Emotional abuse" is an often-controversial catch-all category. I once had a case where the mother locked a 6-year-old in the basement for punishment and told her there were bugs and monsters down there that were going to get her for misbehaving.

Emotional abuse? I said so and the court agreed with me, even though tangible harm was hard to prove and the mental or emotional effects on the child were hopefully transient.

But more important than "tangible harm" is the idea that all childrearing and disciplinary practices are culturally specific and change over time. That I tend to agree that rare and judicious use of spanking can be effective, that probably has more to do with the similarities in worldview that I share with readers by dint of a similar culture than because we're actually "correct" in any universal sense.

I don't know how the spanking bans are working out in Sweden or any of the other countries that have implemented them. But I don't think it's a good use of our resources, which are stretched quite thin for child welfare in the US.

We say we want to "protect children," but how we spend the public money does not back up that we give a damn about children whatsoever. It's just lip service that sounds good.