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The minor atrocity you are hearing involves a  "traditional family values" response to a less-than-perfect report card.
 

Does what you are hearing  MAKE YOU ANGRY?

Does what you are hearing
BREAK YOUR HEART?

Does what you are hearing MAKE YOU SICK?
 

IT SHOULD!
 
 

Can you imagine how it would feel to be this little girl?  Imagine you were a child and the person who was supposed to nurture and protect you was torturing you with a belt  instead?!?!

If a prisoner of war were treated this way, it would constitute a violation of International Law.  But because it is a little child in the home, the events you are hearing would be legal in all 50 U.S. States and most other countries.
 

Apologists for "spanking"  drench their rationalizations  in cutesiness and cloying euphemism: "heat to the seat," "loving discipline," "godly chastisement," "a potch on the toosh," etc.
 
 
 
 
 

But what is "spanking, " really?  It is UGLY... just like the sounds you are hearing now.
 
 
 
 
 

"Spanking" is not an "act of love."  "Spanking" is a form of hitting.  Hitting is violence, not "love."    "Spanking" is family violence against children/rationalized as "discipline."
 
 
 
 

"Spanking" as been expressly banned by law in over a dozen countries and defacto banned in the over 100 nations signatory to the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Children learn how to behave by watching and imitating their elders.  "Spanking" models hitting behavior to a child.  It teaches a child that the people you love are the people you  hit, and that the people who love you are the people who hit you.
 
 
 
 

So is it any wonder that adults who were physically punished as children are significantly more likely to engage in spousal abuse than adults who weren't?
 
 
 

"Spanking" as a solution to childrearing problems is no better than heroin as a solution to personal problems.  In the short run, both seem to "work"- making problems disappear.  But in the long run, both "spanking" and heroin solve nothing.  They only make problems worse.  Recent research shows that the more children are spanked, the more their behavior deteriorates over time compared to other children the same age.
 
 
 
 

The mother whose voice you hear believes that this cruel and degrading treatment will improve her child's school performance.  In fact, physical punishment of children is statistically associated with increased drop out rates and lower average IQ, not with improved grades.
 
 
 
 
 

Fear diminishes rather than enhances a child's ability to learn.  Children learn best when they are excited, interested and engaged, not when they are afraid.
 
 
 

Children are intelligent creatures.  Hitting them in order to train them is harmful and unnecessary!

Physical punishment once permeated Western society: husbands beat wives, teachers beat students, abbots beat novices, officers beat enlisted men, police beat suspects, the judiciary beat petty criminals, masters beat apprentices.  Every last one of these classes of formerly-beatable people has now won legal relief except one: children.
 

Below is the response of a young woman after listening to this sound file:

"I am sitting here crying and I can hardly see.  That girl screaming and
begging was me dammit.  My mother did that to me almost everyday for something or another.  Every little thing I did.  I was made to pull my pants down and lay on my stomach on my bed while she "spanked" me with my dad's belt.  It is so horrible to hear that sound file.

"I used to wet the bed until I was in second grade.  I got the belt every
morning because I wet the bed. My own 5 year old wets the bed.  I want to grab my mother and shake her and ask should I beat my daughter for it?   For sticking my tongue out at my brother, or looking mean at my mom, or not saying ma'am
or talking in church.  Stupid little things warranted me a spanking.
It's so hard to live with it now, to deal with it.  I have nightmares of hitting and hurting my mother, and screaming at her.

"I'm depressed all the time.  I yell alot.  My husband doesn't understand because he was spanked with the belt and "is fine."  Well I am not fine.  Very far from being fine!  And one of the worst things, I can't go to my mom and scream at her for it and ask her why.  She regrets what she did and she is very sorry for abusing me.  So I have nowhere to put my anger from the abuse.  I turn to scratching my arms, inflicting pain on myself.  I am so messed up from how I was "disciplined" I don't even know where to start getting control of myself.  I can't sleep at night b/c I'm scared my bladder won't be empty enough and I keep going to the bathroom.  I'm scared to speak my mind.  I walk on eggshells around people.  I can't believe people think it's ok to spank, especially in that way.  My mother did it with good intentions. She thought she was right.  But *I*
know it's not right!
 

"I wouldn't dare hit my daughters like that. Why do I know it's wrong and others don't (my mom?)?  Hearing that file was like being back in my old bedroom again.  I actually felt the pain.  I hope soon people will realize how wrong it is to hit children and it will end.  My abuse started back with my great-grandfather and was passed down to my mom, and it ended with me.  I hope all the lines of abuse will end soon. I can't bear it."
 

Children remain legally hittable not because there is one single scrap of evidence that they benefit from it or "need" it.  Children remain legally hittable for only one reason: because they have the least political clout.
 

Previous generations witnessed the end of corporal punishments for other classes of persons.  It is time to finish the job.  It is time for the violence to stop.  It is time to end "spanking" NOW!
 

[Visit CD's Anti-spanking Web Page]

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