Corporal punishment of minors in the United States

Corporal punishment of minors in the United States, meaning the infliction of physical pain or discomfort by parents or other adult guardians, including in some cases school officials,[1] for purposes of punishing unacceptable attitude, is subject to varying legal limits, depending on the state.

Minor children in the United States commonly experience some form of corporal punishment, such as spanking or paddling.

[14] According to the study's lead author, George Holden, "The recordings show that most parents responded either impulsively or emotionally, rather than being intentional with their discipline", contrary to the advice of spanking advocates.

[15] The audio recordings used in the study revealed that mothers tended to spank their children, of varying ages, an average of eighteen times per week.

[14] Researchers had earlier estimated that American parents used corporal punishment an average of eighteen times per year.

[6] Based on these preliminary results, Holden suggests that studies using self-reports may dramatically underestimate the actual incidence of spanking by parents.

[6] While support for corporal punishment among American adults has gradually declined since the 1960s, the practice remains more accepted than in European countries.

[7] Murray Straus at the University of New Hampshire argues that the decline in public support for corporal punishment since the 1960s is largely a result of the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial economic system.

Examples of law permitting bodily punishment of children include two different articles of the Minnesota Legislature allow parents and teachers to use corporal punishment as a form of discipline by creating explicit exceptions to the state's child abuse statutes for "reasonable and moderate physical discipline.

In 2008, the Minnesota Supreme Court considered a case involving a man who had struck his 12-year-old son 36 blows with a maple paddle.

In affirming the reversal, the Minnesota Supreme Court stated that "We are unwilling to establish a bright-line rule that the infliction of any pain constitutes either physical injury or physical abuse, because to do so would effectively prohibit all corporal punishment of children by their parents" and "it is clear to us that the Legislature did not intend to ban corporal punishment".

[26] The United Nations Human Rights Committee has noted its concern with the use of corporal punishment of children in settings including schools, penal institutions, homes, and "all forms of childcare at federal, state, and local levels".