The City Council, famous for banning metal baseball bats and the n-word, is taking a pass on a proposal before the Massachusetts Legislature to ban spanking. Council members say they think the bill, which would charge parents who spank with neglect or abuse, goes too far.

The chairman of the council’s General Welfare Committee, Bill de Blasio, said he was unaware of anyone proposing a similar ban in New York, and the chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Children and Families, William Scarborough, a Democrat of Queens, said no one has suggested to him that state legislators take up the issue. “If it literally was an across-the-board ban on all spanking, then I think it’s an overreach,” Mr. de Blasio said. “I think there are plenty of parents who occasionally spank a child in a nondangerous manner, and that can be a perfectly appropriate form of discipline.”

Mr. Scarborough said he had a mixed reaction to the proposal, because he said he is in favor of banning corporal punishment, but he noted that in some families spanking is considered part of the culture of childhood.

“A lot of people have felt they actually benefited from it,” he said.