Parental Entitlement and Corporal Punishment

I INTRODUCTION Corporal punishment is conduct distinguished legally from generic assault and battery by its context and purpose--namely, its use by one person having authority over another for the purpose of improving the latter's behavior and character. With respect to context, public debate concerning corporal punishment in recent decades has been limited to the situation of parents' or their agents' (principally school teachers) using it on children. Indeed, opponents of corporal punishment often point to the settled, widespread conviction that it is never appropriate for adults in a position of authority over other adults to hit the latter for purposes of correction. (1) With respect to purpose, although there are worries that parents will strike children with illicit purpose or with no purpose if given permission to strike them at all, (2) the core issue in the corporal punishment debate is whether striking children for the purpose of correction is permissible. Because of corporal punishment's specific context and purpose, pertinent political and public debate typically focuses on whether and to what extent child rearing differs from other contexts in which one person might wish to change the behavior and attitudes of another. Child rearing might be unique in terms of its empirical features, such as the nature of children's minds or the motivations and dispositions of parents in controlling their children. Those features might support a claim that corporal punishment is uniquely effective with children, necessary with children, or not harmful to children. Empirical arguments concerning the needs and welfare of children have in fact dominated debate concerning corporal punishment. Supporters of a ban contend that corporal punishment is not effective or at least not necessary, that it inflicts psychological damage on children, that it undermines children's trust in parents, that it encourages children to use violence, and that parents often hit children with improper motivation and disposition/Opponents of a ban contend that corporal punishment is necessary or especially effective, at least with some children; they deny that spanking or paddling is psychologically damaging, often citing their own personal experience to make both empirical points; and they assert that the state interference in family life a ban would entail would itself be harmful to children. (4) In addition to its empirical features, corporal punishment of children might be unique in terms of its normative features--in particular, in terms of the persons involved having rights or duties unique to the child-rearing context. Arguments against corporal punishment generally rely on a normative premise denying this uniqueness. The premise is that children possess the same moral rights adults are thought to possess, even as against their parents, and that some of those rights preclude corporal punishment--namely, a right not to be hit or, more generally, a right against attacks on dignity or bodily integrity. (5) In popular discourse, normative arguments against a legal prohibition on parents' using corporal punishment with children sometimes rest on a general moral condemnation of state intrusion into family life. (6) That complaint, however, is hardly specific to child rearing; the same argument was made against state intervention to prevent husbands from hitting their wives for the purpose of behavior modification. (7) And it clearly goes too far, insofar as it would seem to rule out any laws against child abuse and neglect, even though everyone recognizes there must be some such laws. One normative contention one might expect to dominate defenses of corporal punishment, insofar as it does ostensibly differentiate child rearing from other contexts, is that parents possess special rights--that is, that corporal punishment must be allowed because parents are morally entitled to deal with their children as they wish, absent clear and substantial harm. …