If you are critical of parents who choose to spank
There are professionals and their adherents who want to make any form of spanking illegal and punishable by law. Remember that mild physical punishment as described here is NOT child abuse. Spanking is often a cultural practice. Mild forms of spanking that occur in loving relationships should be accepted. Accepting a practice and endorsing it are different matters.
In addition, those who want to make non-abusive spanking illegal are overlooking other forms of punishment that are far more destructive to a child. The worst thing any adult can do to a child is to destroy the child’s spirit, to make children cave in on themselves with self-hate, to attack a child’s precious core of self-worth. Severe, frequent punishment can do this. However, ridicule, emotional blackmail, and other forms of cruelty designed to diminish a child can have horrible lifetime effects that far exceed a few swats to a toddler’s bottom.
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