SPANKING BAN WOULD HURT US MORE

When an Ontario judge upheld the right of parents to spank their
children last week, disappointed anti-spanking activists once again
called the practice barbaric and abusive. Since it's against the law
to strike an adult it should also be against the law to strike a
child, they declared.

I'm the first to admit there's some truth to the argument that
spanking sends kids the troubling message that physical force
(violence) is the way to resolve conflict -- yet I have huge problems
with the anti-spanking crowd.

If you shouldn't do anything to a child you wouldn't do to an adult
why would grounding them or sending them to their room not constitute
unlawful confinement? Why would denying them permission to sleep over
at a friend's not infringe on their right to free assembly?

Despite their good intentions, it seems to me the anti-spankers are
just another breed of zero-tolerance crusader. With their refusal to
recognize shades of grey and their insistence on stamping out all
offending behaviour -- no matter how trivial -- they are among
society's most counter-productive forces.

Rather than focusing their energy on assisting problem drinkers,
zero-tolerance crusaders of yesteryear insisted all alcohol should be
banned. Rather than focusing on the medical needs of the
heroin-addicted, today's anti-drug crusaders believe anyone with the
smallest amount of marijuana should be jailed. Rather than
concentrating on ways to stop genuine child abuse, anti-spankers want
to saddle parents who occasionally swat their children's derrieres
with criminal records.

Most people, I suspect, think it's great that attitudes about corporal
punishment have evolved significantly and that, in many homes and
schools, adults now rely on other means to discipline children. Public
opinion will doubtless continue to move in this direction.

But that's not enough for the crusaders. They want a quick fix, a
shortcut to that blessed day when child abuse is wiped out completely.
And in order to achieve their goals, they're willing to sacrifice you,
your sister and your next-door neighbour.

They want our criminal justice system to squash you if you step out of
line even a teensy bit. They want to arrest you in front of your kids,
compel you to spend your family's vacation money on lawyers' fees, and
(as happens to those who have criminal records) impede your ability to
find a job or travel.

Just as the war against drugs has jailed truckloads of otherwise
law-abiding citizens while leaving drug kingpins largely unscathed,
criminalizing spanking would make life miserable for productive,
upstanding citizens but there's no evidence it would prevent horrific
cases of child abuse.

Moreover, as a recent National Council on Welfare report titled
Justice and the Poor argues persuasively, there's another reason to
think twice about making still more things illegal. Our Criminal Code,
it turns out, gets applied rather unevenly. For example, while a young
man from a middle-class background who vandalizes private property
might never be charged by the police (his parents have the money to
pay for the damage and the communication skills to smooth things over
with the authorities as well as the property owner), a young man from
a poorer neighbourhood would be charged, convicted and perhaps have
his life ruined for doing the same thing.

One study of adults found that although it is students and
white-collar workers who use marijuana most often, blue-collar users
are, by far, most likely to be charged with this crime. In other
words, police arrest those who not only fit their stereotype of a
likely suspect, but with whom they have frequent contact.

Poor people don't own large houses with swimming pools in the backyard
and so spend more of their lives in public spaces. They are also,
according to this report, "more likely to call police for assistance
with neighbourhood and family problems, medical emergencies and other
types of assistance." (Wealthier, more sophisticated individuals turn
to counsellors and doctors.)

Since this report explicitly points out that zero-tolerance policies
hit the poor disproportionately, who do we think would be harmed most
by anti-spanking laws?

Middle-class, educated moms in their air-conditioned homes and SUVs?
Or the shift-working mom who lives in a sweltering apartment and whose
sleep-deprived child is throwing a tantrum on public transit?