ABSTRACT
Spanking is more than mild physical punishment to make children behave. It is also the focus of competing ideas, beliefs, and vocabularies put forth by critics and advocates in a debate over spanking's definition, appropriateness, and implications. Spanking's advocates traditionally use a rhetoric and vocabulary that paint spanking as the reasonable reaction of responsible parents to their wayward children. They claim that spanking is the sign of nonpermissiveness, anticipatory socialization, God's will, a morally neutral childrearing tool, and a psychic release. Critics of spanking claim that these traditional defenses are flawed for a variety of reasons. They argue that, rather than preventing youth problems, spanking creates them. Critics routinely echo the view of most family violence researchers that spanking is a form of violence. They describe spanking as an act of violence that models violent behavior for the child and teaches children that violence is socially acceptable.
