Also, would anyone like to please address my point re: the cane having been an accepted form of discipline historically, but it being widely accepted now that it is a punishment more harmful than helpful?
Isn't it a sign of a civilised society to become less and less dependent on physical punishment and more reliant on talking, teaching and explaining to get points across?
I'll have a go at that, I guess.
AFAIK there are also some laws in place regarding teachers hugging kids at school. Does that mean that society thinks that a hug is detrimental to a kid's development? No. It means that society thinks that teachers shouldn't be touching kids.
Same thing with the cane. Why wasn't spanking in the home banned at the same time? Because the laws aren't necessarily about whether physical discipline is a bad thing, they're about
who gets to mete out that discipline.
Another explanation might be that children of school age are old enough to use deductive logic and be reasoned with and therefore clearly too old for smacking/caning, whether it takes place in the home or at school.
Also there are significant differences between a smack and a caning. Most notably that one involves hitting a kid with a wooden stick and the other one does not. The use of an implement like a cane raises connotations of violence which in my opinion don't have to exist with smacking -- it turns the process into ritualised violence rather than a quick "happens once and then it's over" event.
I have to say that I don't know you or your experiences but for me smacking was never associated with violence. It was strictly a consequence of my own actions - which I was clearly warned about beforehand - and I was never smacked more than once at a time. It also
never occurred after I was old enough to be reasoned with and disciplined through solely verbal/non-physical means.
The issue is clearly very close to the heart of many people on here because of past experiences of violence or abuse and I can respect that, but I also want to say that there are many, many parents out there who do not smack their kids with the intention to cause pain or suffering of any description and there are also many, many kids - myself included - who see it as an ultimately positive part of their developmental process.