Americans' views on corporal punishment are more in line with that of the Koreans, 90 percent of whom favored corporal punishment. On the other side of the spectrum are "19 countries that have banned spanking and three others that have partially banned it" (Bazelon 744). Sweden was the first country to pass a law banning corporal punishment in 1979. Statistically, parents of Swedish children born in the 1950s almost universally used corporal punishment; that dropped to nearly 14 percent for kids born in the late 1980s, and in 2000 only 8 percent of parents reported physically punishing their kids (Bazelon 744). As a result, between 1980 and 1996, only one abuse related death occurred in Sweden suggesting that banning corporal punishment did have a significant impact on the safety of children. However, in the United States, "reports of abuse spiked following enactment of child protective laws in the 1970s" (Bazelon 744). .
According to Bazelon, American psychologists are also divided by their views on corporal punishment. In a 2000 article in the Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Dr. Robert Larzelere, who approves of spanking, reviewed numerous studies and concluded that spanking young children can be effective when other measures of discipline are used in conjunction. On the contrary, in a 2002 article in Psychology Bulletin, Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff, who does not approve of spanking, reviewed numerous studies and concluded that aggression in children and risk of physical abuse were directly related to corporal punishment. This deadlock gives advocates on both sides of the debate the freedom to argue their point. .
Bazelon concludes with a study she believes stands out by University of California at Berkeley psychologist, Diana Baumrind, who conducted a study in northern California from 1968 to 1980, tracking 100 white, middle-class families. She studied the "effects of occasional spanking compared to frequent spanking and no spanking at all," (Bazelon 745).