To spank or not to spank

Tina Yokum was angry when her 5-year-old stepson, Michael, shredded a brand new school shirt with a pair of scissors.

She counted to 10 and asked the boy if it was the only shirt he destroyed. "If you did this to any other shirt, you have to tell me right now," she said sternly. "If I find out later that you didn't tell me the truth, then I'll spank you."

So when Yokum discovered another ruined shirt the next day, Michael got a spanking.

Though spanking is rarely used as a form of discipline by Yokum or her husband, David, she says she is certain the situation called for it. Sometimes, she said, a spanking gets the message across when nothing else does.

Yokum is hardly the only parent with that opinion. National surveys say four out of five parents turn to spanking at least occasionally, and many parents' rights groups believe mom and dad should be left to make that decision.

But other parents say spanking is a form of child abuse and that hitting a child is no better than beating a dog or punching an adult.

"Spanking a child does for that child's development exactly what wife beating does for a marriage," says Jordan Riak, founder of Project No Spank in Oakland, Calif.

Spanking has long been a hot-button issue, and the debate has once again made national news.

Jerry Regier, Gov. Jeb Bush's choice to head the beleaguered Department of Children & Families, tripped a cultural fuse over his views on spanking. The agency's previous director resigned after months of embarrassments, starting with the agency's admission in April that it had lost a child in its care without noticing for more than a year.

In August, Regier came under fire for an article he wrote 14 years ago in which he condoned spanking, even when it causes welts and bruises.

That goes against the position of the American Academy for Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, all of which firmly oppose spanking. So do the widely used teachings of Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Still, spanking, a form of corporal punishment, is legal in the United States. Several western European countries have outlawed spanking, but surveys suggest 94 percent of American parents spank their children by the time they are 3 or 4 years old.

That number does not account for the regularity or severity of the punishment, or the context in which the punishment is delivered.

One thing is certain: It's not an issue that will be clearly resolved any time soon.

"It's an issue that people feel pretty passionately about," says Dr. Richard Marshall, a licensed child psychologist and a professor of educational psychology at the University of South Florida. "No matter which side of the debate you fall on, you feel strongly about it."

At the heart of the issue is the line between corporal punishment and child abuse.

Researchers generally define spanking as two swats on the bottom with an open hand, but that doesn't necessarily reflect what parents do, especially when they're angry.

"Too often, spanking is done in anger," Marshall says. "That line between spanking and abuse is a very narrow one, and it's easy to cross that line."

State laws on corporal punishment vary. Generally, laws state that such punishment is excessive or abusive if it results in sprains or broken bones, cuts or lacerations, significant bruises or welts, and permanent or temporary disfigurement, among other injuries.

Corporal punishment remains legal in at least 23 states, and the United States Education Department's most recent data show that 365,000 children were paddled in the 1997-98 school year, mostly in the South.

Marvin Munyon, director of the Family Research Forum, a state lobby in Madison, Wis., says he believes the anti-spanking group has vilified spanking, making safe, controlled spanking appear to be a form of child abuse.

"We're not doing it to hurt (children), but to send a message that there are consequences to their actions," he says. "I'm talking about spanking a child on their bottom, not ... beating a child."

Munyon, a father of three grown children who advocates spanking in situations of extreme bad behavior, used a Ping-Pong paddle to spank his children.

"Reasonable, physical discipline of a child is a parental right that ought to be protected," Munyon says.

But anti-spankers like Marshall, who has never spanked his four children and does not condone corporal punishment, believes the rights of a child come first.

"We wouldn't dream of spanking an adult to change their behavior," he says. "Why would we do that with a little person?"