07-03-2025
I hate smacking but I know why ‘reasonable punishment' law still exists
When my late mother turned 60, my four siblings and I made a mockumentary based on our 'deprived' childhood as a taskforce for the cruel publican and workhouse overseer, Hazel Pelling. It featured scenes of us dragging branches from local woods, clearing brambles, hauling coal, scything grass, doing laundry. You get the picture. But the footage that made us laugh most were scenes where my big sister dressed up as mum, bent me and my little sister over her lap, and smacked our bottoms.
My mother was the kindest woman on the planet, with an innate tenderness for children, but even she – back in the antediluvian 1970s – thought it appropriate to punish naughty children with a swift, smart smack on the rump. Aimed to startle, not hurt. This only happened when you had done something so bad (like starting a fight in the back of the car) that she sorrowfully explained there was no other recourse. I really do believe that old chestnut that it hurt her more than it hurt us. Yet my own sons, when told about the wicked ways of the past, yelped: 'you should have called Childline!'
Does being smacked as a child linger long in the psyche? Put it like this: the main arena where I've encountered smacking in adult life was during my Erotic Review years, when I encountered various males who eagerly sought corporal punishment from obliging dominatrices.
The fact they want to re-enact the brutality of their prep school and boarding years did nothing to reassure me that the practice leaves no mental scars. Although CP has, at least, given us the late Christopher Hitchens's delicious observation that there's no Englishman's name which isn't improved by the insertion of the word 'spanker' between his Christian and surname.
He's right. Just try it with almost any male politician. George 'Spanker' Osborne, for a random example.
The debate over smacking is, of course, far from over. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have just called for England's lawmakers to ensure this form of punishment is outlawed. Although almost all child behavioural experts believe no form of physical chastisement is ever justified, our law currently stops short of an outright ban and a parent is allowed to argue, if they've struck their child, that the smack was 'reasonable punishment'.
I abhor all acts of violence against children, but I can see why the British law retains this caveat. Because I'm ashamed that I have, in a few moments of extremis, smacked my children. It felt like a failure at the time and an even greater failing now, while they don't even remember it.
One occasion was when my then three-year-old, who was what people nervously call 'hyperactive', rushed into the road into the path of a car despite me yelling frantically at him to stop. I was so terrified by this near-death moment, and so determined for it not to happen again, that I found myself striking his hand with a massive 'NO!'. I was observed by other parents. And then came my gibbering apologies at everyone, including my son.
The other moment involved my older son throwing a rock at his brother's head; they were 5 and 1 at the time. I lost control in both instances because I was so shocked. I hugely regret it and the knowledge I'd done it out of fear and frustration left me determined never to smack them again.
But I don't think I'd have done anyone a service by clogging up our courts and jail system. Or acted as a deterrent to the seriously violent parents who indisputably exist.
What my household all remember far more clearly is the time I went full feral and bit my older son. No, there was not a full moon, turning me into a bristling werewoman. I'd just watched my older boy bite his younger brother very hard despite endless lecturing about this being beyond the pale. So I instinctively grabbed his arm to show him how frightening the gesture could be, leaving saliva on his woolly jumper. But now it's gone down in family legend as the moment mummy should have been dragged off by men in white coats.
Even writing these words, I fear that someone may report me to social services. (Goodbye, free world!). But the actual truth of the matter is that my boys are plotting to recreate this epic family scene on celluloid for my own 60th in three years time. We all survived it and feel wiser for the realisation that peace and love is ALWAYS the answer.
