To spank or not? Let the town vote.

My son will be 17 next month and if your son is anything like him, he will get better as well :-D Many people talk about those terrible teens, but I never saw that. My son and I have a wonderful relationship and I'm very proud of him :-D My son also hates it when I'm angry with him, so it seems that we have a couple of great kids.

Cheers :-)

coluber, I respect your views, but (maybe I'm wrong, but I have this impression) I think that you don't understand at all what are we talking about. Rare mild spanking in extreme cases is not violence. It is not abusing.
Nobody hear said anything about violence and abusing - and government interfering in cases of real abusing (not only physical, but any kind) is something different and I suppose no-one has problems with that.

And everything hurts. Grounding hurts. Forbiding to watch cartoon or baseball game hurts. Sometimes you have to hurt and to punish your child when he or she is particularly and extremely bad. I was never abused by my parents, but, believe me, few times I would be much happier when I was really bad that they spanked me instead of not letting me to go out to play this afternoon.

You CANNOT discipline children without any punishment at all (what is THAT teaching them? you can behave as bad as you want in your life, all you will get is calm talking?). And if government will forbid spanking tommorow, they will forbid grounding next year, and year after that they will decide that children have basic human rights to watch cartoons 24 hours if they want. That's what's the problem with government interfering too much.

finally - I assure you, I am absolutely absolutely sure - at least (at LEAST) 90% of parents are using ocassional mild spanking in some cases. Look around. Do you think 90% of kids are abused? Do they look abused and afraid??

and if we are talking about governments and such a honest worry about "abusing", another problem is hipocracy: take a look of that list. These are countries that committed executions in 2004th:

USA, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Vietnam, China, Sudan, Uganda, Botswana, Somalia, Chad, DR Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus - and only other country that can be called civilized and democratic - Japan. Out of 203 countries in the world.

http://www.amnesty.org/resources/report04/stats-eng/

Which reminds me of my father's (he never spank me, mother did) saying: 'Even when all jump in the well, you mustn't do it.'

I've once in my life spanked a child (12 years ago now), and I'm still ashamed of that.

As soz said - there are hundreds of other possibilties.

well, that's your right.
I am not ashamed, neither I think my parents should be ashamed - I had great parents. I never felt abused, have no childhood traumas, fears or anything. I suppose that's because THEY HAVEN'T ABUSED ME

And, if I have to say once more, hundreds of those possibilities will in some situations hurt child more then spanking. And moralizers can find "abusing" (only on different level) in each of those possibilities as well.