France

	France
	;
	Flag of France
	;

France is a country in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland, Monaco, and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south, as well as the Netherlands. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and over 67 million people (as of May 2021). France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial center; other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille, and Nice. Including its overseas territories, France has twelve time zones, the most of any country.

Inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, France was settled by Celtic tribes known as Gauls during the Iron Age. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundation of the French language. The Germanic Franks arrived in 476 and formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but highly decentralized feudal kingdom; a distinct French identity emerged only during the Hundred Years' War of the 14th and 15th centuries. The French Renaissance saw a flowering of art and culture, various wars with rival powers, and the establishment of a global colonial empire, which by the 20th century would become the second-largest in the world. Severely weakened by the Thirty Years' War and religious civil wars of the 17th century, under Louis XIV, France reemerged as the dominant cultural, political, and military power in Europe by the early 18th century. The losses of the Seven Years' War and costly involvement in the American Revolution precipitated the French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the absolute monarchy, replaced the Ancien Régime with one of history's first modern republics, and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day.

France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating much of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of European and world history. The collapse of the empire initiated a period of relative decline, in which France endured a tumultuous succession of governments until the founding of the French Third Republic during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Subsequent decades saw a period of optimism, cultural and scientific flourishing, and economic prosperity is known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. It was among the Allied powers of World War II but was soon occupied by the Axis in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France.

France retains its centuries-long status as a global center of art, science, and philosophy. It hosts the fifth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world's leading tourist destination, receiving over 89 million foreign visitors in 2018. France is a developed country with the world's seventh-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by PPP; in terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, and human development. It remains a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. France is a founding and leading member of the European Union and the Eurozone,[20] as well as a key member of the Group of Seven, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and La Francophonie.

Spanking in France

From antiquity to modernism, spanking was as popular in France as in the rest of Europe, and its use as a parenting tool greatly reduced in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Nonabusive spanking isn't illegal in France however, as in Sweden, Germany and other European countries. On 23 December 2009, Paris MP and paediatrician Edwige Antier has proposed a bill which would prohibit corporal punishment, including spanking of children.

The French gave the world a special spanking implement: the martinet.

Spanking poll 2006/2007

An investigation of the Union des familles en Europe carried out in 2006/2007 among 685 grandparents, 856 parents and 776 children in France gave the following results:

95% of the grandparents, 95% of the parents and 96% of the children got spanked. The spankings came mainly from their parents. Non-parental spanking has decreased over the last three generations: 52% of the grandparents (58% boys, 46% girls), 39% of the parents (50% boys, 27% girls) and 34% of the children (37% boys, 30% girls) have been spanked by a third party, at school, or other family members.

62% (grandparents), 64% (parents) and 55% (children) found that the spankings were (largely) deserved (this increased to over 60% among older children). 34% of grandparents, 25% of parents and 22% of children feel they were punished too much; 7% of grandparents, 9% of parents and 9% children feel that they have been punished not enough.

64% of the children intend to raise their own children as they were, 22% less severe, 14% more severe (but 18% of older children would raise their children more severely). 26% of the children want more spankings in education. Children that would be less severe in their education, would not ban all spanking, but would give less spankings on the bare bottom (many notes), not use the hairbrush or martinet, or limit the number of strokes.

27%, 34% and 37% of the grandparents, parents and children want to forbid corporal punishment by law. But even these often want to make a difference between corporal punishment and “a spanking” (meaning hand-spanking), which is not considered a corporal punishment.