Smacking children has no place in our society
IT’S a message that we just can’t seem to beat through our thick skulls … Stop. Smacking. Your. Kids. I’m not talking about child abuse, I’m pretty sure we all recognise that for the horrific and criminal behaviour that it is. I’m talking about using your hands or feet or any part of your body as a physical deterrent against child behaviour.
Smacking, spanking, a wooden spoon, a twisted arm … it’s just not OK.
In a policy statement released just last week, the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) has finally come out strongly against spanking, advising “that parents do not use spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, insulting, humiliating, or shaming”.
The most distressing part of this is that we still need it spelled out.
It’s not a topic widely discussed among parents. Perhaps those who do it don’t like to admit it, while those that don’t, don’t want to offend.
After all, it’s officially “not a good idea”, but officially it’s not illegal either.
While there are increasing calls to ban smacking in England and it’s already due to become illegal in Scotland, with Wales set to follow suit, all Australian states and territories condone, in principle, the use of force by a parent, by way of correction, towards a child.
There have been calls to ban smacking here, with child advocates saying it allows actual abuse to slip under the radar, but in a poll of nearly 1400 Australians by NewsCorp in 2012, 75.7 per cent considered it acceptable to smack children as a way to deter them from misbehaving.
Yet decades of research shows corporal punishment is not just ineffective long-term, but might actually encourage bad behaviour and, most worryingly, certainly damages children.
The report by the AAP reveals that children who are smacked by their parents are more likely to develop aggressive behaviours and are also at an increased risk of mental health disorders.
Corporal punishment is now linked “to an increased risk of negative behavioural, cognitive, psychosocial, and emotional outcomes for children”.
The New York Times reports that among those negative outcomes is “reduced grey matter volume in an area of the prefrontal cortex that is believed to play a crucial role in social cognition”.
Smacking has decreased in popularity as a favoured form of behaviour management, but a US study in 2013 found 67 per cent of parents still spank their children. Which is 67 per cent too many.
And if I hear one more person say “I was spanked and I turned out all right”, I’m going to punch them.
No, actually, that’s not true. Because I know how to control my emotions – or at least my physical reactions to them.
Some parents argue that they lose their temper with their children, that they’re pushed that one step too far and issue a smack as a result.
I do understand that. And I’m not saying they are bad parents – God knows that one day I’ll find out I’ve damaged my children in ways that I could never imagine right now. But I just don’t buy this “losing my temper” excuse.
Does that mean every time a co-worker or a partner infuriates them they issue a smack? Of course not. Because they know the boundaries of what is socially acceptable. And hitting other adults is not one of them. Hitting kids on the other hand …
And if you’re spanking in a calm, rational manner … well, I’m afraid I don’t understand that. I’m happy to make the kids cry by taking away their iPads or cancelling a play date; poor behaviour needs consequences. But to hit them? No. I am their safe space. I am their soft place to land.
I was spanked as a child and I DID turn out all right. I wasn’t smacked often but I sure do remember each incident (including the one where I spanked my mother back. Did. Not. End. Well.)
I don’t remember what I did to deserve it, but I still recall the fear and the fury. I do not recall any remorse.
But I’m pretty sure my mother does.
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