UK Edition
I smacked my child – am I a bad parent?
For the last 24 hours, Marianne has been dealing with a severe attack of parenting guilt. When her five-year-old daughter Maya kicked out at her and then called her “stupid”, Marianne was so incensed, she reacted by smacking her daughter on the legs.
Now Marianne is trying to unpick what happened. Smacking was the one “parenting fail” she swore she’d never do. She says: “I feel terrible but when Maya called me stupid, when I was only trying to get her to school on time, a smack seemed the quickest way to remind her who was in charge.”
As she frets about what she should have done differently, Marianne, a 32-year-old music teacher from Hertfordshire, is agonising over an issue which has long divided politicians as well as parents – the rights and wrongs of smacking a child.
But though she may feel guilty, no mark was left on her daughter. That means that under the law, Marianne was perfectly within her rights to use “reasonable chastisement” to discipline her child.
However if a new proposal to ban smacking is passed by the Welsh Assembly next year, the smack – the last resort of many an exasperated parent – could become an offence in Wales, if not yet the rest of Britain.
In France too, where la fessée or a spank on the bottom has long been a central to the Gallic parenting style, a ban on smacking was added to the French civil code just before Christmas, leaving Britain one of only four countries in Europe where it remains a legal way of disciplining children.
Corporal punishment in schools was made illegal in Britain in the late Nineties, and it seems a subtle change is under way regarding such behaviour in the home. Twenty years ago, more than 80 per cent of parents thought smacking was an acceptable way to discipline a child. By last year, the number who said they smacked had dropped to just over third.
And crucially when it does happen, nowadays smacking is likely to be seen as an embarrassing failure rather than a valid way to show a child who’s the boss. A glance at online parenting forums shows there is no shortage of mums, like Marianne, scourging themselves anonymously.
Yet when a smack is defined by a quick swipe with an open-handed palm, do we really need to be engaging in so much hand-wringing – and should it be made a crime?
For Norman Wells, director of children’s welfare charity the Family Education Trust, a smack given by a parent to keep a child within the boundaries should not be confused with child abuse – and if social services or the police got involved, that would cause much more damage to the child and parents. “Many parents use occasional physical correction as a positive disciplinary tool in the context of a warm, caring relationship in which the child is valued and cherished,” Wells says. But Liat Hughes Joshi, author of New Old-Fashioned Parenting, disagrees. “Smacking does nothing to teach children what children did wrong and what they should have done differently, she says. “Worse still, it sets a bad example: that if you are angry, annoyed or someone does something you don’t like, it’s OK to use physical force.”
A study involving 160,000 children, published last year in the Journal of Family Psychology, found that youngsters who are smacked are more likely to defy their parents, behave anti-socially, become more aggressive, and have mental health problems.
This is no surprise to Emma Citron, a consultant clinical psychologist specialising in families and children. “Smacking is always damaging to a child’s emotional wellbeing,” she says.
“If you’ve got a child presenting at a clinic with an anger problem, then invariably there will be smacking in that house.”
According to Professor Sally Holland, Children’s Commissioner for Wales, who is calling for the Welsh smacking ban, if we are not allowed to hit adults, we should quite simply not be allowed to hit children either.
She told the Telegraph: “As it stands, I couldn’t give a legal defence if I hit my husband. But I could if I hit one of my three children.”
Arguments for smacking as a last resort to get through to young children because they can’t be reasoned with any other way are also spurious, adds Professor Holland. “We would not allow the smacking of an elderly person with dementia, or an adult with learning difficulties.”
Professor Holland is convinced that eventual abolition is inevitable. “In 30 years’ time, I think our children will be amazed adults were ever allowed to do it in the first place.”
EXPERT VIEW
What can a parent who feels provoked do instead?
If you are feel you are on the point of smacking your child, it’s probably because the primitive fight-or-flight part of your brain has taken over, says parenting coach, Nadim Saad, co-author of Kids Don’t Come with a Manual.
He suggests these techniques to prevent you crossing the line:
Try ABC: When your mind goes blank, get your self-control back by (A) Acknowledging that you’re angry; (B) Breathing to reduce the levels of stress hormones rising in your body; and (C) realising you have a Choice about what to do next. If necessary, remove yourself from the situation until you’re feeling calm enough to deal with it rationally.
Use delayed consequences: parents tend to think that unless they’ve instantly shown who’s the boss when a child misbehaves, they’ve lost the battle of wills. If your child is over the age of three and is old enough to remember promises, instead of reacting angrily in the moment, tell them: “I’m too angry at the moment to decide what the consequence should be for your misbehaviour, so let’s talk about it when I’m calmer.”
Kids Don’t Come with a Manual by Nadim and Carole Saad is available from bestofparenting.com