Uesugi: As far as smacking your spouse, I was making a (sexual) joke.

Re kids: look, why does everybody have to specify that you can't abuse your child, you can't hit them too hard, etc ? That goes without saying !!
Did ANY of the posts who agreed with smacking imply in any way that you have to beat the **** out of your child until you leave him/her lying unconscious in a pool of blood ?! WTF. Of course smackin is NOT the same with beating up, stop insisting on that distinction, because it is clear to anybody and everybody.

The point is NOT that smacking is THE ONLY way to raise your child. I never said that. The idea is that you use smacking in ADDITION to other methods, naturally. Smacking in itself won't solve the problem, it will merely postpone it.

Like Caravel said, all kids are not the same - smacking won't even be needed for all of them. The idea is that you smack them, but you also must explain to them WHY you're smacking them - because they disobeyed you, because what they did was wrong, and why it was wrong.
However, there's a problem - you can only start explaining such things to them once they're old enough - which, again, depends from kid to kid. A 5 year old is NOT gonna be able to distinguish between good and bad (heck, adults still have problems with those decisions :P), it will only distinguish between your "Yes" and "No". And, if, after repeating the "No" several times, it has had no effect, a smacking will.

As for putting this into law, well, lemme quote a certain movie that's playing these days: "This ... Is ... Madness!"
Why the hell doesn't the gov't take my child altogether, since obviously they know better than me how to raise him/her ?
How about the abuse this will encourage on the part of social services ?
Think of all the nosy buggers with nothing better to do than stick their noses in their neighour's businesses, and call social services as soon as they think there might be some "child abuse" going on.

Look, there will ALWAYS be irresponsible parents. Can't avoid that. However, in most cases, the child is better off raised with his parents, and within a family, than in an orphanage.

Also, what's gonna happen if, say, a parent "abuses" their child ? Take the child away ? Great, we all know orphanages are splendid environments to form young men and women into healthy, normal adults who will integrate into society without problems. Gonna put the parent in jail ? Well, who's gonna take care of the kid in the meantime ? Gonna have the parent pay a hefty fine ? And don't you think the kid will suffer because of that, too, if you run the parent into poverty ?

Idiotic Law. But hey, maybe they'll finally put all those cameras in our apartments so they can figure out right away when an abuse is taking place. I mean, c'mon, Think Of The Children !!11