Spanking mad

A California bill could make spanking a crime. But when did a swat on the bum become child abuse? And how far should the government go in telling parents how to raise their children?

By Eilene Zimmerman

Read more: California, Children, Abuse, Spanking, Life

Feb. 5, 2007 | When I was a kid, I got hit with all kinds of things. My father would take his leather belt off and make a snapping sound with it before coming up the stairs; my mother chased us around the house with spatulas, wooden spoons, whatever was within reach when she hit her boiling point. Despite the occasional welt on an arm or leg, I survived. I didn't grow up to be a violent person and I still love my parents. That said, I'd never do something like that to my own children, although I've certainly lost my cool and behaved in ways I regret. It may not have happened often, but in moments of frustration, exhaustion and anger, I have hit. Maybe because it happens rarely, or maybe because I follow the slap with 45 minutes of apologies, I bristled when California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber announced Jan. 17 that she planned to introduce a bill making spanking a crime. Get a law like that on the books, I thought, and my slap could land me in handcuffs, dragged to court to face a judge (who knows nothing about me or my family).

I am not the only one with strong feelings about the bill; in the two and a half weeks since Lieber made her announcement, critics on both sides of the spanking issue have gone nuts. Bloggers railed against Lieber, child psychologists weighed in passionately, morning talk shows begged her to be their guest. Of the proposal, state Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman said, "I'm trying to pick a word other than crazy." And a survey of 500 Bay Area adults conducted by CBS 5 in San Francisco reported 57 percent opposed the bill (only 23 percent supported it).

At its root, Lieber's not-yet-introduced bill, though it has only a slim chance of passing, raises the question of how far the government should go in telling parents how to raise their children. Is it any of the state's business how we choose to discipline, as long as an essential line isn't crossed (that line being spanking vs. child abuse)? Hitting a child with a baseball bat -- yes, there should be a law against it. And there is; the state has well-established, long-standing child abuse laws, and corporal punishment is already prohibited in California schools, day-care centers and in foster care.

As for what sparked Lieber's decision to introduce a bill about spanking, it wasn't a rash of emergency room visits from 3-year-olds with sore bottoms. The San Jose Mercury News, which first reported the no-spanking story, wrote that Lieber "conceived the idea while chatting with a family friend and legal expert in children's issues worldwide." That friend was University of San Francisco Law School professor Thomas Nazario, who fiercely opposes corporal punishment. "It was my idea and I was primarily responsible for coming up with the final draft," he explains. (Which makes Lieber sound more like Nazario's pawn than a legislative leader, but I digress.)

"Twenty-two countries in the world have similar laws, many more expansive than this. In 1979 Sweden outlawed all forms of corporal punishment regarding children, and then developed educational programs to help parents come up with alternative ways of parenting," says Nazario. Studies of what happened in Sweden since 1979 show much less violence in the Swedish home. But so far, the reported content of Lieber's bill does not include parent education programs or anything else that might empower parents.

Nazario, who is a parent, says he has never hit his kids. Gov. Schwarzenegger said two weeks ago that he and his wife, Maria Shriver, have never hit their children. Lieber has never hit a child, not because she's opposed to spanking but because she has no children. She has never had a child throw a tantrum for more than an hour because she asked her to put on her shoes, or had a child sneak into the bathroom, close the door and pour all the shampoo in the house down the toilet. She has never had to discipline her own kid, because she doesn't have one. Lieber does have a cat named Scoop, whom her veterinarian told her not to slap. "And if you never hit a cat," she's been quoted as saying, "you should never hit a kid."

Well, sure, that makes sense. The majority of parents love their children and spend most of their waking hours trying to prevent harm from coming to them, not causing it. And the state and federal governments already have a legal definition for child abuse, though not every parent (or non-parent or legislator) necessarily agrees with its boundaries. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines physical child abuse as "any non-accidental physical injury to the child, and can include striking, kicking, burning, or biting the child, or any action that results in a physical impairment of the child."

But one person's abuse is another person's firm tug on the arm -- indeed, perhaps it is that difference of opinion that lies at the root of Lieber's legislative attempt. I once yelled at my 3-year-old when she threw a tantrum in a food market, at a time when my younger child had colic and I hadn't slept in four days. An older woman singled me out, and publicly lectured me for 10 minutes while I was waiting to pay, accusing me of bullying my daughter. No one was hurt or even crying -- except me, by the end of it -- but she clearly felt I had crossed some line of parental decency. I felt just the opposite, though: that I had actually employed extreme self-control, considering my state of mind. Her line and my line were miles apart.

But will criminalizing a swat on the bum really reduce child and infant deaths from child abuse? Nazario defends the effort this way: "We're talking about infants and toddlers, these are the most fragile human beings we have, and a lot of parents hit kids out of frustration. I am trying to get people to think twice."

It's hard to imagine any sane person disagreeing that very young children shouldn't be hit. But that doesn't mean the state should intervene, especially when we're not having a statewide spanking crisis. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a Republican from Irvine, offered the voice of rationality last week when he said that although he agrees children under 3 shouldn't be hit, that doesn't mean it needs to be a law. "At what point are we going to say we should pass a bill that every parent has to read a minimum of 30 minutes every night to their child?" he said.

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