TikTok Creator Explains Why It’s Legal To Hit Children But Not Adults In The U.S.

They say you’re not supposed to discuss sex, politics, or religion in polite company. Well, as someone who has worked in the parenting space for a decade, I can tell you there are some things… Well, it’s not that you can’t discuss them, but they’re always going to cause a debate. Among them? Spanking. TikTok creator, dad, and parenting coach Jon of @wholeparent recently waded into those waters with what seems to be a bold claim:

“The only reason that it’s not illegal in the United States to hit kids but it is illegal in the United States to hit adults is because we view children as property.”

And, honestly, it’s a provocative take, but… also inarguable. Why?

“This is just an extension of 16th and 17th [and 18th] century English Common Law, which is the basis for United States law,” Jon explains. “Specifically, it’s called the Doctrine of Coverture, where women are the property of their husbands under English Common Law, and by extension their children are also their husband’s property.”

During this time, women and children did not have independent legal identities. It’s why they couldn’t vote and why property ownership was at best impossibly baroque and at worst impossible. Now there’s some nuance here. Wives and children — white wives and children — were not viewed legally as the way enslaved people would have been, but without making this a very long legal exploration I’m not qualified to speak on, suffice it to say that Jon is pretty much on the money here.

“Thankfully, as far as the women’s side of things, we have done a lot better in the last hundred years in the United States,” he observes. “Women today are supposed to be treated under the law the exact same way as men. … [But] we have not seen the same level of progress where it relates to children.”

(“Supposed” is doing some super heavy lifting there, but let’s move on.)

Specific definitions of what constitutes legal “child discipline” vary by state — but some form of corporal punishment is legal in all 50. In 17 states, it is even legal in schools. (Though that is based in another English Common Law, in loco parentis, which I literally only know from Hamilton.)

So basically, in a whole lot of states, hitting your 17 year old is fine, as long as you’re their legal guardian, but at midnight on their 18th birthday you’re committing assault.

Make it make sense.

The United States is an outlier, particularly among so-called “developed” countries. In 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, established a treaty that requires nations to “take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity” and has been ratified by every country except the United States.

As of 2025, 74 countries — mostly in Europe and South and Central America — have banned hitting children in any setting. Perhaps not surprisingly in the context of this discussion, countries with a history of English Common Law (i.e. former and current British colonies) are less likely to have bans in place.

Jon points out that there are far better ways to discipline children than putting your hands on them. Moreover, children who are hit are more likely to grow up to perpetrate or endure (continued) domestic violence. Being hit as a child is also tied to higher instances of anxiety, depression, and generally antisocial behavior, claims also backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Please,” he concludes, “for the love of God, stop trying to justify hitting your kids.”