Should it be criminal to smack children?

[RagnaToad]

But thats the thing isnt it? It isnt that hard to pick out someone who is a child abuser from someone who corrects. No matter how good a person is at being abusive, eventually he's/she's going to slip up. There will be a mark, or the person will loose their cool to harm someone enough to leave a mark.

All you really need are co-operative people, and a mother isnt going to support an abusive man and not fight back without getting some bruses of her own.

1. And a mark is suddenly proof of constant abuse? I suppose you've never acidentally bruised anyone or bruised yourself? If getting someone to be found guilty would be as easy as you think it is, there would be a lot of innocent people in jail.
2. Are you kidding me? Like I said, bruises are not evidence and a mother being scared of her husband and afraid to resist him is not that rare...

You make it sound so simple. As if, according to you, all you need is a bruise to convict someone. That's not how things go down in court. And that's only a good thing. It IS hard to separate abuse from educational smacking. Or does a parent belong in jail from the moment there is proof that he smacked his child, e.g. other people seeing it?

Abuse is far too heavy a crime to label every form of smacking abuse, and smacking shouldn't be criminalised. But it should be made clear that constant smacking that actually hurts (in child terms) is not tolerated. Don't get me wrong, I despise regular smacking, but I don't think it does the kid any good either if the parents are in jail for no apparent reason. There are a lot of things that parents and people in general do wrong, but they're not always a reason to convict someone of a serious crime.

The problem is that you can't know how it goes down in a household. You can't tell for sure if the smacking is a regular thing and the kid lives in almost constant fear of his dad (like I did), or if a kid is downright out of control and the parents have reached their last resort, smacking as a disciplinary tool.