When you lay your hands a child, you are a child abuser. This includes your own child, and your own child’s ass. A closed fist in the face and an open palm on the bare ass are both abuse. I honestly cannot see why people make a distinction between the two. If a stranger came up to you, pulled your underwear down, and hit you repeatedly on the ass, you would feel that you were just assaulted (and probably molested). So… why is it okay to do it to a child? Your OWN child, no less? I just can’t make sense of it. I remember being spanked as a kid, and all I can really recall of it was the incredible fear and the incredible pain. Some people say “Well it works, and my parents did it to me and I turned out fine,” and what have you, but has anyone considered that we live in a culture of extreme violence, in which people abuse and kill one another on a daily basis? Where did they learn that violence? Television? Video games? Or maybe it was their own parents, who are supposed to love and protect them, whipping their pants off, exposing them and beating them on their ass.
Why do people draw a distinction between “spanking” and “beating”? Your kid is emotionally wounded and scarred by either. And if you grew up getting spanked like I did and you think it didn’t harm you at all, consider your own insecurities, your own fears, and evaluate if you think being beaten as a child because you did normal childish things has anything to do with it. I can’t believe that we live in a world now where a person can go out in public and grab a stranger’s child and beat them on their butt with their belt, and that’s considered a crime that they can be punished for, but they do it at home to their own “beloved” child and even boast about it to other people, and it’s considered “good parenting.”