We should reject spanking

I was disappointed with Ron Prinz’s incomplete and misleading guest column on corporal punishment (“The truth about spanking,” Sept. 26). Prinz claimed he was “getting past myths,” but there is in fact no debate about the correct use of corporal punishment.

Elizabeth T. Gershoff of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, in analysis for the American Psychological Association, has concluded: “Until researchers, clinicians, and parents can definitively demonstrate the presence of positive effects of corporal punishment, including effectiveness in halting future misbehavior, not just the absence of negative effects, we as psychologists can not responsibly recommend its use.”

Few, if any, parents are qualified to know the line between mild and harmful corporal punishment, and the research is clear that all corporal punishment is ineffective. Just as we do not justify any man hitting any woman, we should reject any adult hitting a child.