According to this Time article, the California legislature will soon be debating a ban on spanking:
Need a lesson in parenting? If you live in California, you may have to take one from the government whether you like it or not. Next week, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber will introduce a bill banning the practice of spanking children younger than four. If passed, the state will become the first to make the corporal punishment of infants and toddlers a misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine — along with more than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, that have laws against the practice. “Young children can’t run or speak for themselves. They are sitting ducks for abuse,” Lieber said. “And it is just not true that the current law protects children well.”
For critics of the ban, the current law — which states that parents, guardians and relatives can use any form of physical discipline that is necessary as long as it is not unjustifiable — is enough. But for Lieber, who hears criticism daily from prosecutors, judges and pediatricians that children are being beaten and their parents are getting off on a technicality, the law doesn’t even come close to being enough.
What she’s talking about is the fact that most parents use physical punishment out of anger, not as a deliberate and well-thought-through system of discipline. When you’re spanking your kid while you’re shaking with rage, there’s no doubt that you’re going to go over the edge. But when corporal punishment is part of a consistent and loving plan of action, it’s very different. As Proverbs 22 puts it, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”
Maybe a better answer than a ban on spanking is to address the root issue: parents who have no clue what they’re doing, and are blindly feeling their way through parenthood. As one kid in the movie Parenthood put it, “You need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car – you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any $%@&* #@% be a father.”