I'm tired of over-generalizations about "spanking." Bruising, switches, rods, and welts are not "spanking." Whipping is not the same as spanking. Spanking as

I'm tired of over-generalizations about "spanking." Bruising, switches, rods, and welts are not "spanking." Whipping is not the same as spanking. Spanking as properly executed does not leave marks and is much more a psychological than physical punishment. That is not to say that it's good. Routine and frequent spanking is most certainly evidence of bad parenting. All that said, the reason that parents are free to spank kids whether or not it's the ideal form of punishment is pretty obvious: parents need to have latitude in the punishments they can use to set limits with their kids. Spanking won't work for every child, and probably won't be used more than 5-odd times in the course of childhood, but sometimes there aren't better alternatives. At the very least the effects, however deleterious, of a handful of spankings over the course of a childhood are not sufficiently serious to warrant state intervention. But it is most certainly NOT the same thing as whipping, which is what the author of this piece refers to. (I'm not intending to advocate for spanking, I'm just getting annoyed with how what it entails seems to be getting categorically expanded.)