Campaigns against corporal punishment

Such campaigns date mostly from the late 20th century, although occasional voices in opposition to corporal punishment existed from ancient times through to the modern era.

Most involves hitting ("smacking", "slapping", "spanking") children, with the hand or with an implement – whip, stick, belt, shoe, wooden spoon, etc.

[2]Quintilian and Plutarch, both writing in the 1st century A.D., expressed the opinion that corporal punishment was demeaning to those who were not slaves, meaning the children of the freeborn.

[9] The Howard League for Penal Reform campaigned in the 1930s for, among many other things, the abolition of judicial corporal punishment by cat-o'-nine-tails or birching.

[33] In 2008, the UN Study on Violence against Children set a target date of 2009 for universal prohibition, including in the home,[34] an aim described by The Economist the same year as "wildly unrealistic".

[36] In Austria the White Hand Campaign for a worldwide legal ban on child corporal punishment tries to raise awareness for the topic in the German-speaking countries.