(CNSNews.com) - The issue of spanking has again surfaced in California, where members of the California Assembly's Public Safety Committee voted 5-2 on Tuesday to advance a bill that would define the use of switches or paddles to be child abuse and subject anyone convicted under the statute to face a possible year in jail.

The bill, AB 2943, is sponsored by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View), the same lawmaker who made national headlines last year for her proposal to totally ban spanking in California, even in people's homes. (Lieber's office provided information to Cybercast News Service for this report but did not grant an interview.)

This year, however, Lieber is quietly proposing a bill that would continue to allow spanking with the hand for children older than three but would ban parents from using "implements" to punish children. Lieber defines "implements" as "sticks, rods, switches, electrical cords, belts, brooms, or shoes."

Pro-family conservative groups are up in arms, saying the bill would criminalize wooden spoons and rolled-up newspapers.

"AB 2943 will result in good parents being arrested, handcuffed, and charged with criminal child abuse," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), a California-based pro-family conservative organization.

Outraged parents, like Sacramento-area mom Sarah Berke, gave lawmakers an earful at a public hearing held Tuesday before the vote.

"As someone dead-set against the evil of child abuse, I also have a strong faith that calls on me to correct misbehavior and rebellion when it occurs," Berke said. "This means a spanking once in a while. My faith and moral beliefs teach me to 'train up a child in the way he should go.'"

The mother of five children, Berke admits that she has used a wooden spoon over the years to enforce discipline, especially when her children were young.

"Usually I have them go to their room, I go get the spoon, and we come in and talk about why they are getting the spanking and what they need to do to change their behavior," she told Cybercast News Service.

Under the proposed legislation, Berke would be labeled a criminal.

"I could be arrested and charged with child abuse, eventually tried in a criminal court and eventually sent to jail," Berke said. "My children could be taken away from me, or I could be sent for non-violent parental education. There are a lot of good parents out there that would fall into that category."

Using a wooden spoon in a medicinal, loving manner to discipline, she said, is not child abuse.

"Child abuse is the whole idea of beating a child," Berke said. "It's a motivation from the heart that you just want to hurt the child because they're making you angry or whatever."

Existing California law makes it a crime for any person, under specified circumstances, "to willfully cause or permit a child to suffer, or inflict on a child unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering."

"We're all against child abuse and in favor of enforcing existing laws against abusive parents," Thomasson said. "But loving, corrective discipline of children's misbehavior is very different from hateful, harmful abuse."

What does the research say?

The nation's leading researchers who have studied spanking - professors Robert Larzelere and Murray Straus - are split on the question of whether all corporal punishment should be banned.

But both told Cybercast News Service they agree on one thing: Spanking in itself is not child abuse.

"The research on spanking, and on the broader context of corporal punishment, says it depends on how it is used - just like any other type of discipline enforcement," said Larzelere, a professor of human development at Oklahoma State University.

"If it is used too severely, then it does have more detrimental effects than alternatives that can be used instead, as you would expect," he said. "It is also detrimental if it is used as the main discipline tactic."

"On the other hand, if it is used primarily to back up tactics like time-outs, basically in two-to-six-year-olds, then it is more effective than almost all alternatives it's been compared with," he added.

Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, agreed that spanking is not child abuse as it is currently defined in the United States.

"The child needs to be injured for it to be abuse," he told Cybercast News Service. "Spanking rarely, rarely, produces an injury. In every state of the United States, parents are given the legal right to hit children for purposes of correction and control."

Whether spanking should be banned by statute is a different question, according to Straus, a prominent advocate for banning spanking.

"About two-thirds of physical child-abuse cases start out as spanking that escalates out of hand," he said. "The parent spanks the child, and instead of the child being compliant, the child calls the mother a name, kicks the parent or something like that, and the parent then ups the ante, and it cycles on."

There is a bigger problem, Straus said, which should prompt action by states.

"Spanking increases the probability of a child having lots of problems, including serious problems like delinquency (when the child is a bit older), and depression (when they're adults), and hitting a dating partner or a spouse (when they're adults)," he said. "It roughly increases the probability of bad outcomes by three to five times.

"That's a little hard to understand, because almost everyone can say, 'Well, I was spanked, and I don't beat my wife,'" Straus said. "(That may be) a true statement, but the implication that 'spanking is okay' is wrong. They were just one of the ones that were resilient enough and weren't affected that way."

Larzelere, however, said he questions both Straus' conclusion and his research.

"I've replicated his results and shown that you get exactly the same results for any other kind of discipline enforcement," Larzelere told Cybercast News Service.

Larzelere said he's found equally poor outcomes for children taken to psychologists and psychiatrists - even for children treated with the drug Ritalin, which is widely used to control attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity.

"So it's 'stacked-deck' research," he said, "where it's biased against anything that parents can do for problems with children."

Larzelere, meanwhile, said that there isn't a good reason to ban a practice that, when carried out reasonably, proves to be effective.

"The important issue is how hard a child is hit, not what they're struck with," he said. "I wouldn't want to see a parent criminalized in California because they used a rolled-up newspaper to swat a child, in an appropriate situation, on the rear end.

"Making absolutist statements against all instruments is insensitive to some ethnic minority groups, who tend to use those methods," Larzelere added.

Even Straus doesn't think parents should be jailed just for spanking their kids.

"I don't think it should be criminal legislation," Straus said, adding that he still advocates that states take a stance on the issue and clearly condemn spanking.

AB 2943 goes next to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, the same place where last year's anti-spanking bill died.

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