spanking adj : quick and energetic; "a brisk walk in the park"; "a lively gait"; "a merry chase"; "traveling at a rattling rate"; "a snappy pace"; "a spanking breeze" [syn: brisk, lively, merry, rattling, snappy, zippy] n : the act of slapping on the buttocks; "he gave the brat a good spanking"

English

Pronunciation

• a UK /ˈspæŋkɪŋ/ /"sp

Linguistics

What and how

Definitions

Spanking, by today's definition, consists of striking the buttocks, usually as a physical punishment, with an open hand.

There are many alternative terms, often linked with an implement (such as belting, caning, whipping), but also sometimes used more generally (such as thrashing, whacking, or whupping) or using terms for a stroke (usually in the plural), such as blow, swat (hence swatting), lick (hence licking) and less common ones including onomatopoeias such as "pop". Terms such as hiding or tanning can also be used.

• The (ma
• Sometimes there is another specific term for a spanking on the seat of the trousers, as the Dutch pak voor de broek ('swats on the pants').
• Similarly there can be analogous words for spankers, as the Dutch bilslager ('buttock beater') and the French (Frère) Fesseur ('(brother) spanker'), both referring to a cleric, especially in the Jesuit order, specifically charged with the professional administration of spankings on the (typically bared) buttocks of naughty pupils in reputedly strict Catholic schools; in Paris's St. Lazaire prison the rod was administered on the bare buttocks of criminals by a member of the Lazarist order referred to as the Père fouettard ('whipping father') as allegedly happened to the writer Beaumarchais.

Scope of punitive use

The two subsections group the various spanking spheres for convenience: the 'domestic' model spanks in a paternalistic mentality, intending to (re)educate the spankees, often 'for their own good', and more informally, which often includes the use of conveniently available objects made for another purpose, such as a hairbrush, belt, pointer (rod), Physical punishment yardstick, wooden spoon, spatula, or other various household objects. Meanwhile, the 'judicial' model essentially aims to enforce the social code, be it the (formal or customary) law or a substitute order, 'for the common good' (raison d'état, social cohesion, public safety and morality...), usually with a traditional, often even formally imposed implement.

Domestic model

Spankings are administered in particular to children by their educators, i.e. mostly (biological, step-, adoptive- or foster-) parent or guardian and school -, orphanage etc. staff. Race and gender have a significant influence on child spanking. Black children and male children are more likely to be hit at home and school, and spanking of boys tends to be more frequent than spanking of girls. Many countries in Europe, as well as New Zealand, have outlawed the domestic spanking of children. In 2007 the Australian government spent 2.5 million dollars on a campaign to persuade Australian parents not to spank their children. The legal status of parental discipline in the US is determined on a state level, and is increasingly in flux, with some states, such as California, considering outright bans (these moves have so far failed), and others detailing guidelines within which spanking remains legal.

• Wives and Servants (especially domestics; British judge Sir Francis Buller was famously accused of advocating such punishments)

• Often copied from domestic discipline, as in fraternities and sororities (originally living units where seniors and/or staff wielded the paddle rather like parents at home), and sports and other teams (though now usually only as 'play' in hazing and rarely as actual coercive sanction) and other initiation context, as with recruits (in military, police and some other professions).

• Informal spankings in the domestic context can also occur in an institutional environment, parallel to the more formal punishments, when administered by the victim's peers.

Judicial model

In many cultures and legal systems it was common to administer judicial and prison beatings on the buttocks (convicts by definition are at the mercy of the authorities ; even today severe punishments, even the dreaded judicial 'Singapore' cane, are awarded to enforce internal prison rules in various countries).

The parallel with child discipline may be part of the deliberate use of public humiliation as punishment. Hence, the condemned is often bared, completely or partly to expose the buttocks, or only covered for modesty, with little protection against the instrument; this is still usual under sharia in many countries. While even the back is sometimes left clad for an Islamic whipping, as in Saudi Arabia, in (ethnically mainly Chinese) Singapore and (Muslim) Malaysia the target is always the bare buttocks.

• Often the strong arm of the law — mainly (para)military and police, charged with the physical execution of corporal punishment — and some similarly hierarchical organisations, has particularly strict internal discipline, usually enforced internally (as by court-martial, or in 'minor' cases simply by the superior officer), which in many traditions entailed punishing the culprit's (often bared) tail-end;
  • especially navies, where order must be maintained in confined spaces at all cost, are renowned for stern discipline, and some measure of it not unknown in merchant naval traditions either, but usually only 'boys' (including midshipmen, though) were spanked, adult sailors rather had their back and/or shoulders lashed;
  • in general the treatment of boys under arms has at least a measure of the paternalistic 'educational' discipline, often meaning they are more likely to have the bare bottom punished;
  • when martial law is imposed (formally or de facto), at home (as in Pakistan under former president General Zia ul Haq http://www.corpun.com/pkjur1.htm) or under military occupation, such harsh practice is often extended to the civilian population (more difficult to control and/or less respected) as well, even limiting normal process of law; while regular corps discipline is generally conducted within quarters or correctional facility, to 'whip' the masses into obedience public administration is often preferred for maximized deterrence; yet in some cases the accusations of 'war crime'-type punishment are somewhat hollow because the occupied country often already used similar physical coercion, e.g. Korea publicly caning the criminal's bare behind over a bench before and during the Japanese rule http://www.corpun.com/krjur1.htm

• Judicial corporal punishment is still used in some post-colonial, non-Islamic countries, including caning or even the cat o' nine tails in certain Commonwealth nations.
• Traditional justice such as in tribal chief's courts not infrequently includes spanking, sometimes even carried out by the regular police force.
• Even where corporal punishment is illegal, or very restricted, it rather often is a common weapon for so-called vigilante justice, sometimes tolerated or even legally legitimated by the authorities (as in various parts of Africa, e.g. Botswana), sometimes practiced by rebels (as in Nepal), often remarkably popular with the general public or a large section where official 'modern' western-style justice seems unable to stem crime, as in South Africa.

• The Empress Theodora is reported to have spanked a courtier :
• Finally, there are cases of 'summary justice' which do not fit the vigilante logic, but still intend to enforce a social order by improvised corporal punishment, such as some Bolivian bus drivers using a belt on strike-breaking colleagues http://www.corpun.com/boj00506.htm#16025 on the streets, or “In French pit villages the wives of striking miners confronted scabs and humiliated them by removing their trousers and spanking them.” -Lynn Abrams, The Making of Modern Woman (New York: Pearson Education Limited, 2002), 203.

Spanking In Schools

In some schools, spanking is allowed as a means of disciplining students. Such schools often allow elementary students (ages 6–11), intermediate students (ages 10–13), and high school students (ages14 –18) to be so disciplined.

Circumstances

Position

In its most common use as a means of domestic corporal discipline, spanking usually refers to a child lying, stomach down, across the spanker's lap, with the parent or teacher bringing their open hand down upon the child's posterior. Other ways to administer spanking are with the child laid on a flat surface and held legs-up, by the ankles, and spanked with an open hand, or with the child bent over a piece of furniture, or standing and touching its toes.

Controversy

Spanking — like corporal punishment in general — is a hotly debated social issue in many countries. Questions exist as to whether children should be spanked (see the sections below), whether it is an effective method of discipline (and if so how it is best done, see above), and whether or at what point it constitutes child abuse. Most of these points apply more generally to most or all forms of physical punishment.

Arguments for spanking

Those who accept spanking often frame the issue as a matter of effective discipline, stating that young children respond most effectively to sensations, like pain. They also hold that when used solely for disciplinary purposes and not done out of anger but in moderation, there is little evidence that moderate spanking is harmful. Further, many believe that discipline problems among children have recently increased, and partially attribute the increase to the decline of both parental authority and the use of spanking. Proponents of spanking also argue that moderate spanking is simple and effective, especially compared to non-spanking disciplines proposed by both academic psychologists and parents which may rely upon what they consider complicated or unrealistic methods that are often not implemented successfully.

Psychological Conditioning

Judaeo-Christian Arguments

Sociological Debate

There is a widespread and deep skepticism among pro-spankers of all the arguments against spanking, and a general feeling that the practice of spanking recalcitrant children, and comparable forms of corporal punishment, have proven their worth over a period of many centuries, and across many different cultures. They believe that the current Western fashion against spanking is an arbitrary and improper application of egalitarian principles to what they claim is an inherently unequal social relationship. A few of their replies to some of the more common anti-spanking arguments will now be briefly summarized. To the common claim that spanking teaches children to resolve conflicts by physical force, some pro-spankers reply by distinguishing two senses of the claim. The claim is true, they say, if it means that appropriate spanking teaches children that parents have the right to resolve certain conflicts, resulting from a child’s disobedience, by a measured use of physical force. But (they ask) how is this supposed to convince us that all spanking is wrong? Unless (they say) spanking has already been shown to be immoral, the fact that spanking teaches children that they too, when parents, will have the right to spank their own children (not for the sake of revenge, but as a means of moral education), is scarcely a decisive objection against it. On the other hand, pro-spankers say, the claim might be taken to mean that spanking teaches children to use physical violence as a means of revenge. But this, they insist, is simply false, if taken to apply to all spanking. When appropriately administered (and when calmly discussed with the child, afterward), spanking, they say, is understood by the child to be a just punishment for disobedience, not a means of revenge (indeed, according to pro-spankers, most children who receive an appropriate spanking would subsequently laugh at, or else resent, the charge that their father or mother had acted out of vindictiveness). Pro-spankers do not find any respectable and demonstrably unbiased studies to support the currently fashionable charge that spanking, however administered, tends to produce violent, vindictive adults. To a pro-spanker a claim such as "the number one predictor of violent behavior is whether someone comes from a home where violence is practiced, including a home where children are subjected to physical punishment", is simply preaching to the converted: by putting spanking in the same category with child abuse and other violent behavior, the anti-spanker who makes such a claim is already assuming what he claims to prove: namely that spanking is the moral equivalent of child abuse. And thus (the pro-spanker argues) such claims prove nothing. What the anti-speaker ought to produce, according to the pro-spanker, is evidence that even spanking that is administered non-vindictively, as a just and proportionate punishment for disobedience, is a "predictor" of violent behavior. According to pro-spankers, anti-spankers have so far failed to produced such evidence. The reason being, according to pro-spakers, that there is none.

Selected pro-spanking individuals

These persons are either involved with pro-spanking organizations, and/or have admitted to being for to spanking either in print or in an interview.

Child's right to self-defense

The issue of a child's right to self-defense has long been debated. Spanking in public and private institutions might be regarded as grounds for assault charges and therefore identification of a victim and perpetrator.

Arguments against spanking

Anti-spanking advocates argue chiefly that spanking is abusive, that it is ineffective, and that it teaches children that physical violence is an acceptable way to deal with other people. They point to the fact that scientific research has failed to back up any of the claims in favor of spanking while research has consistently shown that the number one predictor of violent behavior is whether someone comes from a home where violence is practiced, including a home where children are subjected to physical punishment. (Actually, in the Dunedin Study those who were merely smacked had "similar or even slightly better outcomes" than those who were not smacked in terms of aggression, substance abuse, adult convictions and school achievement.) Some believe that spanking contributes to physical abuse in cases of domestic violence, bullying at school and physical abuse on siblings. Most violent criminals were spanked as children and many cases of bullying at school have been linked to physical abuse cases. Spanking is also criticized for being a violation Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with older children and adolescents."

High Profile Individuals in The United States against Corporal Punishment of Children

These persons are either involved with anti-spanking organizations, and/or have admitted to being opposed to spanking either in print or in an interview.

Organizations Against Corporal Punishment of Children - By Country

Alternatives to spanking

Opponents of spanking state that there are numerous methods of non-violent child discipline which they think are at least as effective as spanking, and without the negative side-effects that they attribute to spanking.

Minimal use of spanking

Despite the intensity of the controversy over spanking, positions between the two extremes are also common. Indeed, it may be that most people do not support either of the extreme views discussed above. Many parents believe that spanking is not inherently abusive and can sometimes be an effective form of discipline, but also believe that it should usually be avoided. Some, for instance, use spanking only when a child does something dangerous and it is critical that an immediate, lasting impression must be made. Others point out that individual differences in temperament have a great effect on the way children respond to discipline, and criticize both extreme positions on spanking as taking a "one size fits all" approach. They argue that spanking may be the most effective form of discipline for some children, but that it should only be used on those particular children who respond well to spanking and do not respond to alternative methods of discipline. Studies show that the nuerochemical effects of spanking are analogous to the effect produced by taking mild stimulants such as Ritalin or methylphenidate; thus individual temperament and brain chemical balance are key factors in an individual's response to receiving or witnessing a spanking.

Legal situation

School corporal punishment is banned in most western nations. All of Europe (including the United Kingdom) and New Zealand have banned school corporal punishment. In Australia and Canada, corporal punishment in state schools is banned, while it is partially or completely banned in private schools, in some states. In the United States, 29 states ban corporal punishment in schools. In the remaining states, it is up to each school district to determine whether corporal punishment will be used, in what situations will it be applied, and the manner in which it is given. In a few cases, school officials have lost their jobs for spanking students. There is some disagreement about how much paddling occurs in U.S. schools. Some estimates place the number of paddlings at approximately 350,000 a year, while the National Association of School Psychologists places the number at 1.5 million cases a year. Evidence suggests that in the United States, race and gender play a large role in school corporal punishment, with black students being more likely to be struck than white students, and male students being more likely to be struck than female students, for the same infractions. Corporal punishment of male students also tends to be more severe. In some places, this sexual discrimination has the force of law. For instance, in Queensland, Australia, school corporal punishment of girls was banned in 1934 but corporal punishment of boys in private schools is still legal in 2007.

Non-punitive and voluntary spankings

Spanking exists in spheres of life distinct from punishment. Note the issue of legal consent which may or may not represent a defence to criminal liability for any injuries caused during the spanking. Apart from the erotic and from fraternity/sorority type initiations, which have their origin in educational (domestic or boot camp) types of discipline, these include:

Folkloristic spanking traditions

Religious customs

On the first day of the lunar Chinese new year holidays, a week-long 'Spring Festival', the most important festival for Chinese people all over the world, thousands of Chinese visit the Taoist Dong Lung Gong temple in Tungkang to go through the century-old ritual to get rid of bad luck, men by receiving spankings and women by being whipped (as in the Ancient Roman -unisex- Lupercalia); the number of strokes to being administered (always lightly) by the temple staff is decided in either case by the god Wang Ye and by burning incense and tossing two pieces of wood, after which all go home happily, believing their luck will improve. http://www.corpun.com/twi00401.htm One prime example of a pagan Czech Easter celebration is the "pomlazka".http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/index_view.php?id=11330 Farmers used to believe that a strong whipping after the winter period guaranteed health, prosperity, and most importantly a good harvest. It is only the women who are given a good spanking on bare posteriors with whips made of willow twigs, decorated with colourful ribbons. It is mainly younger boys who go from door to door, hoping to thrash a few girls on their naked buttocks to get some eggs in return, while singing traditional Easter carols. After strong spankings, boys come and throw girls in a stream, or put girls' heads under a water pipe to be sure to give a good shower.http://www.radio.cz/en/article/52649

Birthday spanking

There is a custom in certain circles to administer spankings to the buttocks of the birthday celebrant. Customarily, the person receives the number of smacks corresponding to his or her age, plus "one to grow on", often harder than the rest, and sometimes a "pinch to grow an inch". A possible origin of this tradition is the smack often given to newborn infants intended to help them start breathing.

Adult spanking

Adult spanking is a highly contentious form of discipline spanking that is frequently mis-categorized and misunderstood. The controversy stems from a multitude of sources. First, there are those that prefer to consider spanking in this form as something that can only occur between a parent and a child. This opinion is backed up by the APA who includes parent - child relationship as part of the definition. Second, there are few recognized legitimate scientific studies that have been conducted on the subject. The leading source of funding for such research is an organization that earns its revenue through the promotion of entertainment spanking services leading skeptics to question the legitimacy of the work http://www.spankingcommunity.com. Third, the lack of credible licensed practitioners often leads to individual claims of group membership through self-diagnosis, affirmation from others who have made similar claims and a variety of alternative therapists. A study by McNulty and Wardle suggests that attempts to seek help through typical support channels may lead individuals to seek comfort through unconventional means.

As a sexual act

Spanking is a part of sexual foreplay for some adults, often as a lighthearted playful activity. There is a genre of pornography that incorporates spanking as a sexual fetish.

Recreational context

Playful enactment

Child's play often imitates real life, especially featuring part of daily life, even the most unpleasant.

Notes

See also

• Erotic spanking
• Spanking implements

External links

• Spanking Galleries(explicit)
• The Spanking Art Wiki - A collaborative project to collect information on spanking in arts, movies and literature
• World Corporal Punishment Research (corpun.com) — objective website with large, constantly improved documentation, especially on discipline of boys
• Every Smack is a Humiliation, by Dr. Alice Miller
• Spanking facts and Research: Info and discussion about females who were spanked growing up
• Corporal Punishment Discussion and Information
• Etymology Online
• Ecstagony- Dictionary of spanking implements, generally with punitive use
• Funk & Wagnalls Standard dictionary
• IMDb keyword spanking (in motion pictures)
• Is Corporal Punishment An Effective Means Of Discipline? (American Psychological Association)
• Corporal Punishment Articles (APA Psychological Bulletin Journal
• Christian anti-spanking critique, with reference to the theologian Paul Tillich
• Spanking OTK
• USA Today article about CEOs who were spanked

Pro-spanking

• Family Integrity
• A pro-spanking activism group
• Spanking (Focus on The Family)
• (U.S.) State by State laws allowing certain forms of spanking
• Hit with the question: Were you spanked? CEOs say yes
• Spare the Rod? New Research Challenges Spanking Critics

Anti-spanking

• End All Corporal Punishment of Children
• The Center for Effective Discipline (StopHitting.com)
• Canadian government advice against spanking
• Why It Hurts To Spank A Child
• Chris's Anti-spanking Web Page An advocacy site containing the writings of the creator of the alt.parenting.spanking newsgroup on Usenet
• Children are Unbeatable Organisation aimed at banning smacking in the United Kingdom

Children's views

• Results of a 1998 survey in England and Wales
• Comments on CBBC Newsround website
• Smacking: Right or wrong? CBBC Newsround