"Further, rates of child abuse appear to have declined; the number of
referrals to St. Gan's Hospital in Stockholm,
which receives all child maltreatment cases, had
declined by 1989 to one-sixth of the 1970 rate (Haeuser,
1988)."

excerpt from:
The Swedish Ban on Corporal Punishment: 
Its History and Effects
Joan E. Durrant, PhD, Cpsych
From Family Violence Against Children: A Challenge for Society,
Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, New York, 1996. (pp.19-25)

The whole article can be seen at:
http://www.nospank.net/durrant.htm

A further excerpt:
[Re Swedish law against corporal punishment of children]
"The effects of the law upon behavior are difficult to
demonstrate, as no large-scale longitudinal studies have been
conducted. There is evidence from
two qualitative studies that although Swedish parents
tended to be rather permissive in the early 1980s, this has
changed and they now are generally quite skilled in using
democratic childrearing methods (Haeuser, 1988, 1990).


Cathy's parenting website:
http://www.ncf.ca/~an588/par_home.html