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| What kind of person would you expect to utter the statement, “Spanking is child abuse?” Many who advocate that children should get more spanking and paddling might imagine perhaps some “bleeding heart liberal” would make such a sweeping statement. Perhaps some “semi-godless European.” Maybe some “pop-psychologist,” or “book educated do-gooder” who never had a child of her own and who doesn’t know anything about raising children. | | “Spanking is child abuse” is, in fact, quite an extreme statement. I have never made such a bold statement myself, even after a decade of studying school paddling and working to end it. Most people who are working to end school paddling in the US, and even those working to end all “spanking” in homes as well, would not so bold a statement. | | “Spanking is child abuse.” I think maybe some of the more socially advanced countries like Sweden, Germany, Denmark, and others in the growing list that have recognized hitting children as wrong, might at least lean that way over time, but I doubt if many of them would even use such a strong phrase. Most people, especially in the US where so much “spanking” of all types still goes on, oppose spanking because it is unnecessary, and because it can so easily degrade into abuse by anyone’s definition. There are no sharp lines or distinctions to prevent the abuse beforehand. Nearly everyone who physically abuses a child, by any definition of abuse, starts out with the idea of “discipline.” | | But all of those guesses about who made the statement would be wrong. The person who made that statement to me was a middle-aged, fundamentalist Christian woman. She had raised many children herself, and was often very involved helping to raise her grandchildren as well. She and her husband had volunteered as Boy Scout leaders for many years as well. She knew a lot about practical issues with children, much of it from the “school of hard knocks” that most of us learn through. She was not highly educated. I’m not sure she even had any formal training beyond high school. | | Her statement caught me completely off guard. I found it both encouraging and amazing. I used to attend church with her years before, and these days we mostly drop an e-mail from time to time. She asked what my family was up to, and I casually mentioned that I was working on a web site about school paddling as physical and sexual abuse. I didn’t know her views or what she would say, but her response was that one, powerful line. She said she was glad I was doing the web site. And then the kicker. “Spanking is child abuse.” | | Without a doubt many of the victims we interviewed, and many of the people working to end spanking and/or school paddling, are fundamentalist Christians as well. There is a growing consensus and awareness among Christians of all types that Jesus never taught any type of child hitting, and that it can be and often is abusive on many levels. It is never necessary. | | I think my friend, however, may actually be right in her seemingly strong statement. We do not rank how hard a husband hits his wife to label it “domestic violence” if his intent is to cause pain and humiliation, even if he thought it was “necessary” to “control his wife.” It is abuse, with perhaps various levels of harms of all types, for him to hit her at all. Perhaps the reality is that hitting children is likewise always domestic violence, always harmful, and always abusive, differing only in degree and in our ability and willingness to detect the harm. |
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