I have never needed to resort to physical punishment in order to discipline my charges and I do not believe it was ever my place to do so. But I have difficulty in understanding how the likes of the Children are Unbeatable Alliance can campaign for laws to ban parents from smacking their children.
There is a vast difference between smacking and beating a child. I believe we need to protect our children as they are our most precious assets and that there is a great need for better parent education, enforced if need be.But to create a law against smacking seems somewhat excessive.
More children in our society have been psychologically damaged by their parents' divorces and partner swapping, sexually explicit media campaigns and advertising, and violent video games and films, than by the occasional smack on the hand or leg. Many of the children I cared for over the years suffered more from parental neglect in favour of work than they would have by a smack.
Passing a law to ban smacking is not going to solve the problem. Most people lose control due to stress, not a lack of education. Having such a law will only add to their stress and make them less eager to admit it if there is a problem, for fear of legal retribution.
Few parents do not truly love their children, no matter what mistakes they make in their children's upbringing. Rather than making parents feel guilty and inadequate, why don't we offer free counselling and anger management classes alongside antenatal classes?
Parents are not ogres but people struggling to do what's right in a world that seems to do so much wrong. I hope anti-smacking campaigners will take a look at the future consequences for all families, not just the extreme ones.
Perhaps the Bible is right when it tells us to 'train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it'. Often we do what we have learned from our own upbringing, and habits are hard - though not impossible - to break.
