ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to put corporal punishment in a broad historical and cross cultural framework in order to uncover clues to the socio-historical changes that may underlie the reduction in corporal punishment that has already taken place and clues to what might happen in the future. It shows that more organizations and to pay attention to corporal punishment. Prospective studies provide a much more solid basis for Inferring that corporal punishment does harm children because they can take into account the misbehavior that led the parents to use corporal punishment. The real cause of the link between corporal punishment and child behavior problems might be other family and parent characteristics that lead to both corporal punishment and child behavior problems. The fact that children are so rarely placed under state supervision in Sweden and are so frequently in the United States reflects different political and social policies.
