TO SPANK OR NOT TO SPANK? BAN USE OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT WITH KIDS.

Byline: KERBY T. ALVY

AT least 15 countries have already banned the use of corporal punishment with children, including Italy, Germany, Norway, Israel, Austria and Greece. They have seen it wise to extend to their youngest, smallest and most vulnerable citizens the same legal protections against being punished physically that in the United States is currently reserved for adults and for prisoners.

These countries recognize that corporal punishment -- whether through spanking, slapping or hitting -- is violence, defined as acts carried out with the intention of causing physical pain. By banning its use with children, they take the most basic stand against violence that any society can.

That is also a fundamental reason why people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the use of corporal punishment in child-rearing.

Indeed, King's parenting is instructive. As his son Dexter indicated in his book, ``Growing Up King,'' ``he didn't spank us ... Daddy might sit down and explain things. `This is why you shouldn't do that, son.' He would deal more on a mental level; try to get us to understand why things were.''

I, too, am a parent who has never spanked or hit our children, Lisa and Brittany. I know how challenging children can be, and especially in the early years that the proposed ban on corporal punishment covers.

The fears that so many have expressed in response to the possible passage of the proposed legislation -- that without corporal punishment, children will run wild -- certainly have not been the case with Lisa and Brittany. They are really quite wonderful young adults and are achieving rather well at one of our state's schools, UC Berkeley.

By passing the proposed ban on using corporal punishment with children under 3 years of age, our state's elected officials would let those parents who still use corporal punishment know that there are better ways to gain the cooperation and respect of children, as well as better ways of keeping children out of harm's way.

California should follow the lead of some of the countries that have already banned corporal punishment by making parenting education readily available to all parents. And here's an area where we Americans can be justifiably proud about how we do things.

We have created some of the best and most effective parenting and family skill-building programs in the world, including excellent programs for parents of infants and toddlers. We have created programs that are sensitive to and respectful of the values and experiences of the rainbow spectrum of cultures in our nation. We are primed because of this to make our country an even greater place to raise children and to provide our children with the best adult guidance and love.

California is even more primed than other states to provide parents of young children with the training, education and support that they need and deserve.

We have a statewide system -- First Five California -- that is devoted to promoting the healthy and safe development of kids 5 and under. Part of what the First Five groups in each county can do is make these extremely helpful parenting programs available to all parents in their communities.

It is unfortunate that we may have to ban corporal punishment, making its use a misdemeanor, to get more of our neighbors, friends and family members to raise the children of our state nonviolently. It would certainly be preferred that parents who are still hitting, spanking, slapping and doing worse to their children would realize on their own that there are better ways of raising kids and seek to learn them. But that has not happened.

Our government -- the neighbors we elect to represent all of us -- have a duty and an obligation to take action on behalf of all children of this state.

I applaud Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, for taking the lead in this regard. I know firsthand how venomously she is being attacked by people who are frightened and incensed over not being allowed to discipline with physical force and who feel that government should not be involved in orienting people how to raise children. I, too, have felt those painful attacks for supporting legislation to ban corporal punishment.

Well, Lieber and her elected colleagues would be remiss in their responsibility to the state's citizens who are not yet old enough to vote, to not act on their behalf to stop the unnecessary swatting and spanking of little people.

They would also be remiss because they would be ignoring research findings that indicate that the use of corporal punishment puts children at greater risk for a variety of problems, like becoming more aggressive, having poorer mental health, and having difficulty internalizing moral values. That research, which is summarized in a 2002 article in the scientific journal, Psychological Bulletin, further indicates that children who are so punished are also at higher risk for being victims of child abuse and for becoming abusers of their own children and spouses when they grow up.

These findings do not mean that every child who experiences hitting, whipping, spanking and shaking by their parents will have and create these problems. It is like the research on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Not every smoker gets lung cancer, but every smoker has a higher likelihood of that happening.

Thus, legislating against the use of corporal punishment, especially since there are so many more positive ways of raising children, is good public policy.

It is in all of our best interests to abolish these practices. In doing so, and in promoting positive parenting and parenting education, we are also appealing to the better angels of our character as a state and as a people.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) no caption (spanking)