Corporal Punishment of Children Should be Illegal

Let me draw the line for you.I know it might be tempting to think that because pro is arguing all corporal punishment should be illegal, that I am arguing all corporal punishment should be legal. That's wrong. I'm arguing for the right of parents to cause pain to children. I'm not arguing that parents have a right to inflict serious injury to children. Bruises, cuts and wounds, using extreme force or tough physical weapons, and hitting a child for non-corrective reasons or in anger are a partial list of the circumstances where it is not OK. Courts already recognise these actions as "child abuse." The fact that child abuse is harmful is a reason to ban child abuse, not all light spankings which almost nobody would deem abusive.Like my opponent I'm going to go through my case first, and then his.My CaseWhy not shoot the very naughty kid? Because a less harmful action, such as a slap to the buttocks, would be sufficient to do the job. We both agree that parents should be reasonably nice to their children, and that means protecting them from danger. A slap to the buttocks protects them in that it prevents them from getting themselves killed in the future, whilst a gunshot wound or knife cut, at best, puts them in more danger. I should add that I wasn't attempting to prove anything with this point - it was just to set the context and show that parents typically aren't whacking their kids because they feel like it. Kids have serious tantrums, and parents need to be serious in dealing with them too. It isn't because it's easy that one does it - it's because it's really important that children learn, and there's no other way to get through to them.Mental patients are a special case because they lack the learning capacity, so physical reinforcement is usually pretty pointless. It's because the punishment is corrective - meaning that children can learn from it - that we allow it to happen to them. Because you cannot engage them mentally or rationally, assuming they have not yet developed the capacity for this, the only available option is physically.Taking away positive reinforcements, such as toys, movies, or free movement ("time out" - when you're 4, free movement is a bit of a privilege to show you're a big kid) does work in some cases, because they remove a physical "good". Most responsible parents reserve light smacking for more serious offences, to show children the severity of their actions. It's a more powerful way of communicating the message as the reinforcement is directly tied to the action, as opposed to being something incidental removed by the action. It's important for parents to be allowed to use all corrective tools that do not harm the child, rather than assume that one mode of response to bad behaviour is right in every context for every child.I think my point about Sweden was missed. The point is that parents are prosecuted not for flaring tempers, but for light smacking reported by a member of the public. The harm of that is that the parents lose their children, which is bad for not only the parent but the child's behavioral development as well. This is because they lose their key authority figure and moral guide, which is difficult to transfer especially if the child is young. Furthermore, there is a presumption that the state can raise a child better than a parent. In Sweden, what we saw instead was children being taken out of loving relationships and put into foster homes where they were physically and sexually abused to an extent much worse than any light smack they ever suffered at home. On another level, if parents do not feel "in command" of their child, they might not bother to teach children important moral values - classing a light smack the same as a gunshot wound only gives parents incentives to use a gun rather than an open palm.The response my opponent gave to this is that just because the law would be broken doesn't mean it shouldn't be the law. That's true, but the point was more about the consequences of the law being broken rather than the mere fact that it would be broken. The end goal is for these children to grow up and learn good values - they can't do that if their good parents, trying to set them on the right course with a corrective smack, are jailed by the state while they are put in the hands of an institution that probably isn't much better.RebuttalOnce again I'll be using the four-point structure we established last round.First, about learned aggression. I said children can distinguish between themselves and their parents. They recognise when actions are universally OK and when they are privileges allowed to only a few. A child may try to get into the drivers seat of a car, but on being corrected will learn that the action is not OK for them. In the same way, a child will probably attempt to hit another at some point (whether they were smacked or not) and thus learn that hitting others is not OK for them. Children thus recognise that certain actions are context, subject and person relative in terms of their morality. My opponent further agrees that mild smacks are OK, conceeding my whole argument that some forms of corporal punishment (ie mild smacks) should be allowed. I should add, however, that the results were not mild - the evidence even indicated that smacked children were less aggressive, implying that light corrective actions on the part of parents do not cause any long-term aggressive behaviour.Second, about whether the location hit is relevant. Once again, I think it is. Parents are administering corrective punishment here - they do not want to administer retributive punishment because they love the child. That implies that they don't want to cause too much physical injury, but rather only pain. Otherwise, it ought to constitute evidence that the intent was to injure, which implies child abuse (which we both oppose). So parents who hit a child's head rather than their bottom are more likely to cause injury. I question whether this is in fact an extremely relevant point to the debate, but no matter where the child is hit, parents should be able to justify that their actions were corrective. My key point in this debate is that administration of corrective pain, in measured amount and frequency, is justifiable and should not be banned.Third, we have an aweful lot of consensus in this debate, and thus it's great we agree not all corporal punishment is harsh, and all harsh punishments are bad. What this implies is that we ought to ban the harsh ones - we both agree on that. The issue in this debate is about whether we should ban all corporal punishment, or merely some.Fourth, about harms to society. While I agree extreme corporal punishment might harm society, I'd like to remind everyone that I have never been advocating for legalising all corporal punishment. I've been negating that it should be illegal. I've already gone into some detail about why it's legitimate to make exceptions to the law in this case.-Children are not adults. We ought to give them different punishments that correspond to different needs for learning. We both oppose child abuse. The question is whether a smack or other light physical punishment ought also be banned. In fact, it's often necessary, and a part of good parenting.