Smacking children just teaches them that violence is acceptable

Australia stands alongside the US in not banning smacking when used to send a clear message to an unruly child. But what kind of message is it?

Is it the loss of control that makes us parents do it? Stress, or exhaustion, or a feeling of sheer helplessness; a combination of all three? Physically lashing out at our children, smacking them. Scotland’s just banned it, removing the defence of “justifiable assault” that allows parents to use physical punishment to admonish a child. More than 50 other countries have already made the change, including Ireland, France, Germany and Norway. Australia stands alongside the US in not banning smacking when used to send a clear message to an unruly child. But what kind of message is it?

A Scottish government spokesman said: “We believe physical punishment can have negative effects on children which can last long after the physical pain has died away.” Some say it’s the nanny state gone mad, others that it’s the mark of a mature nation.

It’s about stress, which is about a loss of control. The loss of control comes from the sense of erasure the parent feels. They’re immersed in a world that’s constantly challenging, exhausting and blindsiding them; not going their way, not obeying their authority. Uncertainty, in whatever form it takes, is extremely destabilising. When we can’t control what we think is our right, we get stressed – and colliding, sometimes catastrophically, with that is the loss of control that is parenthood.

One day long ago, when I was lost in motherhood, my eldest, a toddler, began a whiny tantrum. He wouldn’t stop. I smacked him. I’d never smacked him before. He looked at me in bewilderment and alarm and then burst into great howls of outrage. I rushed him into my arms and held him and held him, and wept, too: for what I’d done, and for the woman I’d become. I didn’t recognise her. Stress had driven me to a place I’d never been. It was like a rampant weed affecting every facet of my life, even the most cherished. I’d never felt so depleted. For as a freshly married woman with two small children I’d suddenly lost control of my world, the migraine-free existence of a single career girl who’d always called all the shots: what she ate, how much sleep she got, how much time she had to herself.

I’d been disappearing into the strange new land of the homemaker, where I often forgot to eat because I was so busy tending to the needs of everyone else; where I’d sometimes end up crying over the dishes in the sink for no reason other than exhaustion. I was dealing with a new diminishing; a feeling that all the promise and vividness of my youth, all its loudness and spontaneity and joy, was being rubbed out.

Stress is a condition more debilitating than I ever imagined. You feel weak, vulnerable, embarrassed to admit it; and that vicious new intruder in your life could, at times, hijack everything. When my eldest said once, as a toddler, “don’t shout at me mummy”, it broke my heart and brought me up abruptly. It told me I was stressed, and it wasn’t his problem – it was mine.

Four kids down the track, I haven’t smacked a child in years, and rarely shout; I’ve loosened, let go. Learnt that neither’s hugely useful. The threat of screens being locked in a safe, or a cancellation of the Netflix subscription, is a much more effective disciplinary tool. To me, discipline issues arise when you’re failing to connect. They often feel like a child’s extreme call for attention. As a parent you need to pause, listen, communicate. It’s taken me years to understand that, rather than just lashing out in an uncontrolled, despairing frustration.

Smacking teaches children that violence is acceptable; it normalises it. It teaches them that displays of brute force are a way of controlling someone; that physical dominance is an acceptable outlet for anger. Studies suggest that those who are smacked are more likely to develop aggression. The bullied, who remember the sharp shock of powerlessness, can so easily become the bully.