MollyMac

I agree. Although I have on occasion suffered severe provocation by other adults and have quite desperately wanted to physically assault them, I have never had any trouble controlling the impulse. My family would have considered any grown man or woman lashing out at another or getting involved in a physical fight as being quite barbaric. And yet I grew up being hit by both parents and by older brothers. I was also hit many times by my teachers at infant school – it was allowed in those days. What kind of message were these grown-ups giving me?
I suspect this might be why, in spite of my own disapproval of smacking and determination not to do it and in spite of my impeccably civilised behaviour in the company of other adults even in the face of extreme provocation, I occasionally lost control and hit one or other of my children. At some level even I felt that violence against children was acceptable. I use the word violence deliberately: it might only be a “smack” but it bloody well hurts – physically and perhaps emotionally too.

Is hitting children really necessary? Does it actually achieve anything positive? Off the top of my head I can think of several categories of behaviour in children that it is common to punish them for:

The first is emotional: throwing an almighty tantrum, perhaps, or assaulting another child in anger. Is hitting the child as a punishment likely to make them better at controlling their emotions?

The second is ‘stupidity’ – or at least something that is obviously stupid to us but not necessarily so to the child who simply acted without thinking e.g. opening the door of the car while it was in motion. So hitting them is going to make them carefully consider the consequences of all their actions in future?

Disobedience. To some extent this overlaps with the first two: “I told you not to do that but you did it!” Whack! But why did they do it? Because they’d forgotten, weren’t thinking, were tired/hungry/angry or it just seemed like a damn silly rule which had been imposed without explanation in the first place. In these circumstances, why is hitting better than some non physical kind of punishment or a simple explanation of why the rule had been made and the consequences of it being broken?

Finally, behaviour which involves dishonesty, such as taking something that wasn’t theirs to take or telling lies. I have extensive personal experience of this – as a child I had no option but to become an extremely convincing liar as this was the only way to avoid being hit whenever I gave into temptation and stole from my mother’s purse, went somewhere I’d been forbidden to go etc etc. The only thing hitting ever did for me was to make me more devious, more accomplished at whatever I’d been hit for in the first place. I wasn’t surprised, many years later, to realise my own son was beginning to repeat this behaviour pattern. Although come to think of it, this isn’t just about physical punishment but about any sort of punishment. My son grew out of his dishonest behaviour mercifully quickly – a lot quicker than I did. I think what helped him do this was that I stopped thinking in terms of punishment and more about how to help him to develop a conscience and consider the feelings of others. But perhaps that’s a subject for a different thread.

echidna

Sorry to leave this thread for so long but the weekend was busy for me, in fact I was even tapping out some of this in a tent on a laptop on Saturday night …

MM, yes if a stranger were to strike a child it would be termed assault, but that’s quite naïve. A child’s relationship to one’s parent is entirely different. If an adult were to randomly kiss and hug a child it would likely be not viewed the same either.

MM, the fact that smacking failed to cure you of petty stealing and only taught you to be more cunning about it, is not surprising. Whatever means the parent employs to stop the activity, it will be one which the child does not like, so whatever the parental response it’s quite likely initially to be countered by evasion by the child. I don’t think it’s uncommon anyway, I went through that stage as well. Another alternative might be to multiply the child’s pocket money ten-fold. Now while I think that’s also an inappropriate response, I’m not going to legislate against it.

echidna

(MM as well) Oddly enough no, never have, don't think I ever will. In fact I’m the only one in the house who doesn’t (her 16 yearold sister often uses an occasional smack to keep the precocious little one in line). And no matter what has happened during the day, they remain very close. So at the same time, I won't automatically condemn a parent who does feel the need to smack.

Maybe the closest I have come was once with a particularly annoying adolescent on one of the disabled youth outings I volunteer for, but my actions at the time were only to snatch an offending torch from him. Genuine oppositional defiance is an extremely difficult behaviour to deal with, and yet contrary to the mantra that smacking perpetuates violence, no, as an adult, I have never smacked a child.

Parenting is no easy task, and for whatever reasons some children are easier than others but none are as compliant as we'd like them to be. While we’d all like children to rationally agree with our opinions & follow our wishes, they don’t. Now parents can respond with a reasoned argument, which the average 8 year old will quite often devastatingly counter with "no" or the more sophisticated "don't wanna". So the next option might be bribery, even to the point where the child won’t even move without the obligatory bribe, or "treat" and the treats themselves may well commence a longterm escalation.

Indeed I would argue that some alternatives to smacking (such as outright bribery and spoiling) can even leave the child with more lasting negative consequences than smacking ever could in itself. There seems to be a public perception that it is impossible to raise an emotionally healthy child with the occasional smack. All focus on the act of smacking and everything else seems to be forgotten about.

Even as adults we do many things which we know we should not, and reason alone is not sufficient to deter us. In the case of driving, not the reasoning of the danger can prevent most people from speeding, only the threat of financial punishment seems to have the desired effect. Now, before anyone starts seeing that as the slippery slope to canings for traffic offences, the point is simply that children are not always so easily coerced. The point is, that sometimes, deterrence via punishment, is one of the few remaining options left after other have been exhausted. Fining their next month’s pocket money, or depriving them of outings for the next month are not always desirable either, because in the end you’d like to see them have fun, but not at the expense of learning a lesson. And on top of that, the angry child is just as likely to fail to respond anyway.

I think many anti-smacking campaigners are simplifying their own negative experiences & extrapolating those to all versions of smacking performed by all parents. Unfortunately there are also many testimonials such as my own, which find that smacking does not necessarily leave any lasting negative consequences, in fact may well have helped keep me in line. It’s simply something which cannot be so easily written off as evil parenting per se.

In the end, not all parents are equipped with the skills & tools necessary to reason with their children, or cajole them into compliance, and there are so many ways to parent, one should whenever possible, avoid being judgemental as to how others go about their task of parenting their own children. Children can be given diabetes by an inappropriate diet of sweet foods. So should Mars Bars be banned ? Of course not.

Sure smacking can be done badly in my view, but that doesn’t automatically mean it should be outlawed under all circumstances. The more authority the State (government) takes, the less remains with the parent, or for that matter adult carer. And this is maybe my strongest objection, that such legislation fundamentally undermines the role of parenting within society.

I see that there are many moral puritans who are too ready to enforce the narrow PC parenting techniques on others & in doing so, further weaken remaining parental authority. I would argue that in many secondary schools (particularly our government schools for instance), so much authority has swung from the adult to the adolescent, that lack of internal discipline means many students leave with grossly inadequate education. No, I don’t necessarily advocate the reintroduction of the strap, but it is simply endemic of the State’s desire to remove parental authority from parents and empower angry teenagers who are not necessarily ready to take complete responsibility for their actions.

Personally I don’t see myself so much as pro-smacking, as anti-anti-smacking. AFAIC, if you can parent without smacking, great, but if you can’t then keep it to a minimum & only exercise it carefully.

Debbie T

I don't approve of hitting wives but I recognise that an exhausted husband who's been driven to distraction can lash out in anger. But if it happens the husband can at least apologise and try and explain how they'd felt at the time.. They can say that it was the wrong thing to do - hurting people is wrong - and tell the wife how much they love them.

Funny how that sounds so wrong if you change child to wife.

sugarbeth

Bribery and spoiling are alternatives to spanking? Are you kidding me? Why do people continue to think that "no spanking" equals "no discipline"? There are countless non-violent ways to discipline a child - that a parent is not motivated enough to figure out one that worked for their child, speaks volumes about what sort of parent they are.

echidna

Sugarbeth, it’s not immediately clear to me how your reply is relevant to my paragraph which you quoted.

Yes, in order to placate children, some parents simply acquiesce to the child’s wishes. I don’t automatically see that as the best response either, but that’s just my personal view & I don’t plan on publicly lynching anyone who disagrees.

No, it was a serious comment.

Obviously there are some who claim "no spanking" equals "no discipline", but I’m not one of them & I consider both the pro-spanking and the anti-spanking side to be equally puritanical.

There are far more countless ways to parent, period. That a parent would be motivated enough to figure out a parenting system which worked for their child & then blindly apply it all other parents of all other children, speaks volumes about what sort of parent they are.