Spanking should be banned in US schools

Imagine having that first conversation with a new partner where you ask, “what do you like?” There’s a off-radar thing that really does it for you, and you want to talk about it first in a neutral way before exploring. Not a requirement, but it turns you on and helps you come harder. In the heat of the moment, you want to be able to lean in and whisper, “let’s do that thing.” Your kink isn’t that weird and appears regularly in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, GQ, and Men’s Health. But it involves getting pleasure from pain — so ideally you want to talk about it first. Let’s call it X.

Now imagine you turn on NBC and hear a story about a public school in Georgia. A mother is angry because school administrators X’d her five-year-old son as a form of punishment. She did not give consent. But she was told that if she did not allow her son to be punished in this way, he would be suspended, she as his caregiver could have been be arrested for his accumulated truancy. Noting his bruises afterwards, she wants to sue the school. It is explained to her that this is impossible, because what happened to her child was legal. She can only upload the video of her son’s punishment to Facebook, hoping to influence public opinion

Watching the story, you feel shock, anger, and mystification. This is America in 2016. Why are children punished with the exact same action people like me request from trusted partners in bed?

Spanking has been used to as a disciplinary tool on children since the beginning of recorded history. While most states have banned spanking in public schools, 19 still allow it: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. According to NBC’s reporting of federal data, students in these states received corporal punishment 166,807 times in the 2011–2012 school year, the most recent year for which this statistic is available. This right is upheld by the 1977 Supreme Court Ingraham v. Wright ruling that physical discipline in public schools does not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment or its due process protections. As the April 2016 case in Georgia demonstrates, parents who enroll their children in public schools in these states are not given a guaranteed right to opt them out.

Peer-reviewed research on corporal discipline overwhelmingly portrays it as a practice that can negatively affect child development. According to multiple recent studies, children who are physically punished are more likely to be aggressive with their peers and may have greater difficulty learning. For example in a 2016 Journal of Family Psychology study by Gershoff and Grogan-Taylor, the authors identify 13 side effects of spanking that increase risk for detrimental outcomes. Thompson et al. in Academic Pediatric Association journal (2016) describes a seven-month study of 372 families in which spanked children were almost three times as likely to engage in aggressive behavior like hitting, kicking, and throwing. Organizations that have officially disavowed spanking as an effect technique include the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of Social Workers. Civil rights activists criticize use of physical discipline in public school as it is disproportionately used to punish children of color.

In addition to professional organizations dedicated to the well-being of children, vocal critics of spanking children include adults who practice BDSM. In her 2014 Slate essay “Spanking is Great for Sex,” Jillian Keenan summarizes why this practice can increase orgasm power:

Nerve tracts that pass through the lower spine carry sensory information to and from both the butt and genitals…There’s also a blood vessel in the pelvic region called the common iliac artery. When blood rushes to (your butt), blood rushes down that artery. But the artery splits. Some of it directs blood to the genitals…The other time this kind of genital blood engorgement happens is during erection or arousal.

The physiological impact of spanking described in this passage shows why consenting adults do this as foreplay. Adults who discipline in a physically intimate way may not be aware of how this practice might affect the interpersonal or sexual development of the child.

If it’s illegal for an adult to strike a woman or an animal, it should also be illegal for an adult to strike a child. We should follow the examples of the 30+ countries like Sweden where corporal punishment has been outlawed. Spanking should only be a sexy thing done to consenting adults with safewords. It doesn’t belong in schools.