The Case Against Spanking Kids

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The law prohibits you from spanking your boss, your employee, your spouse, your best friend, or a stranger you walk past on the street.

But in the United States, it's still perfectly legal to spank your own children.

This is because state laws only define physical abuse as any "unreasonably" violent actions that leave a mark on a child. Spanking and other less severe types of physical punishment generally don't count — and as a result, about 90 percent of American parents resort to spanking at one time or another.

Research, though, tells us that getting spanked as a child can leave a discernible mark on people: it makes people more likely to suffer from addiction, depression, and other mental health problems as adults. This is one reason why 37 countries have explicitly banned all physical punishment of children — even by parents — since 1979.

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5778940/the-case-against-spanking-kids