Did you know that spanking as a means for disciplining children is banned in 51 countries? That number has recently gone up to 52 as France joins the list. The country has turned this into a law on Dec. 22.
The banning is part of the Egalité et Citoyenneté (Equality and Citizenship) that Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) Marta Santos Pais passed in the French parliament, according to Violence Against Children. It covers the protection of France's 14 million children from corporal punishment but then the law is only symbolic.
In other words, a parent or adult cannot be criminally charged for spanking in France and there are no court sanctions attached to it. According to Telegraph, many French parents actually do not favor the ban as 85 percent admit to spanking their kids. This doesn't mean, however, that the new law is useless.
Family advocates believe that having the law can still help reduce child abuse and mistreatment as it raises awareness regarding harsh discipline. The stipulations of the law will be given out in family documents or read and advised to newly-married couples.
For child support groups and protective agencies, this move is still a victory as it proves decades of research showing spanking and other forms of physical discipline as ineffective. In 2016, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin went over five decades of other studies on the subject. Data from 160,000 children revealed that spanking contributes, instead of corrects, to behavioral problems, according to the press release.
Sweden was the first to pass a law banning spanking in 1979. Other countries like Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Mongolia, South Sudan and Ukraine also have similar laws regarding spanking and corporal punishment, according to the Sweden Institute.
The United States, on the other hand, has a law going as far back as 1977 that considers corporal punishment as a constitutional right, according to the Supreme Court. But in recent years, American parents have become more aware that spanking bears little positive results.
In fact, a study published in the Pediatrics journal has shown that spanking among American parents has reduced from 1988 to 2011, especially in middle-income and highly educated families. There have been calls from advocates and government leaders to also ban corporal punishment in schools. Others have replaced detention and harsh disciplinary actions with more positive tools like meditation, counselling and therapy.
