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If you hit a dog, it's animal abuse. If you hit your spouse, it's spousal abuse. If you hit an old person, it's elder abuse. If you hit your child, it's just called parenting. That needs to end Children are not property and have the right not to be beaten.

It’s child abuse, like the rest. All against the law, but also, no enforcement, & it’s very difficult to get any consequences for the behavior. Men owned their women & children until very recently, & it was absolutely lawful for those men to employ whatever mechanisms necessary to get compliance.

It's not illegal to hit your kids in the USA

“or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm to a child including but not limited to physical abuse, verbal or emotional abuse, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, inappropriate sexual behavior, neglect, & medical neglect.”

So if it can be proven that serious harm was done via physical violence (hitting,) it is against the law. The problem is that the law does not prosecute the law as it is written. (I worked in the anti violence field on Illinois for a very long time. The law’s good. The enforcement sucks.)

In Maine, the law regarding parents, guardians, & foster parents says, “‘reasonable degree of force’ is an objective standard. To constitute a reasonable degree of force, the physical force applied to the child may result in no more than transient discomfort or minor temporary marks on that child.

The law is not good. Parents can hit their children, embarrass and humiliate their children, and terrify their children. As long as no marks are left behind, it’s called parenting. The marks show up later as trauma and the behavior is repeated. Spanking should be illegal in the US.