In 1997, there were 798,358 substantiated cases of child abuse in the United States, a decrease of over 170,000 (21%) from the previous year.

(Source: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, Child Maltreatment 1997: Reports From the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect System, April 1999 in U. S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1999 [119th edition] Washington, DC, 1999, p. 230.)

"Our study, combined with recent work that reveals conservative Protestants are more likely to praise and hug their children...leads us to wonder if the unique cultural context of conservative Protestant parenting may mitigate some of the adverse outcomes typically associated with corporal punishment."

(Source: John P. Bartowski and W. Bradford Wilox, "Conservative Protestant Child Discipline: The Case of Parental Yelling," Social Forces, 79 (1) [September 2000]: 265-290.)

Reasonable people can disagree on the merits of spanking, but is a slap on the wrist of a misbehaving child really "violence"?

In Child Abuse & Neglect, Tracy L. Dietz of the University of Central Florida uses data from the Gallup Organization's 1995 "Disciplining Children in America: Survey of Attitudes and Behaviors of Parents" in order to determine the demographic characteristics associated with both ordinary and severe corporal punishment. The phraseology of the piece is instructive: we learn that previous studies have found that "more than 90% of American parents hit their young children," sounding grim indeed. Furthermore, those who spank their children are said to "engage in violence." In fact, under the author's definition, a slap on the arm or a shake, however gentle, is "corporal punishment," thus revealing the astonishing finding that 95 percent of the children in the survey had been corporally punished during the preceding year.

Dietz found that African-Americans, parents with low incomes, and respondents in the South were considerably more likely than were others to use "severe corporal punishment," which includes hitting the child's bottom with a belt or hard object or slapping the child in the face.  However, once a wrist slap is decried as "violent," what language of censure is left to describe an abusive beating?

(Source: Tracy L. Dietz, "Disciplining Children: Characteristics Associated with the Use of Corporal Punishment," Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 24, No. 12 [December 2000]: 1529-1542.)