52 Widespread official attention and legal initiatives are brought to bear against family violence when adults are victimized. Clinton's radio address condemning domestic violence, in the wake of the O. J. Simpson verdict and the eve of Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March on Washington, focused almost exclusively on spousal violence and mentioned child victims only in passing. American parents freely hit their kids. Two of three adolescents reported having been legally hit by their parents or other adults at least once while in their teens. The benefits of corporal punishment promised by its advocates do not materialize in fact, a point well reviewed elsewhere.
Academics can study and report, logicians can reason, civil libertarian hearts can bleed.
Hitting children is not a subject to which rational debate applies. It is another manifestation of Americans' unique exploitation of children as models for absolutist behavior standards and austere punishments that grown adults would not impose on themselves. In contrast, the U.S. appears to be the only nation that authorizes the hitting of juveniles while shielding even adult criminals from physical punishment. One suffered a hematoma requiring medical attention and absence from school for several days, the other lost the use of one arm for a week. Not only did the Court uphold corporal punishment of youths, it allowed schools to inflict it without hearing, notice, or review.