DO WE SMACK, OR NOT?

DO WE SMACK, OR NOT?

By Frances Harris

I’ve never met a parent who did not want the best for their children. And I’ve rarely met a parent who has the skills to meet their own lofty standards always. Smacking and sometimes beating children has been in existence as far back as I can remember, and further. It is a big subject being discussed in Australia today. Sections of the government want to legislate to stop smacking.

I have been passionately on both sides of the argument at some time, first not to smack, then as a more experienced parent to give a short sharp smack on the least sensitive part of the body when the child is out of control and can’t be coaxed. Now, after years of thought, I can’t decide. There are problems on each side. Maybe they are both right in differing ways. You see, smacking might be a bad thing, but if it’s taken away, there needs to be something better to take its place. So far I’ve not seen the magic system that universally works on all children.

To examine the history of my own family, beginning around the turn of the 19^th Century, numbers of children in an average family would range between five and twelve. Many families, including my own earned a living through hard manual labour, and particularly on rural properties. If a child was not able, or didn’t want to follow instructions, the situation could easily end badly for the child. Child mortality due to accident and injury was high and medical intervention was practically non-existent. There were no second chances to get it right.  It was almost impossible for mothers to keep track all of the children at any one time, there were too many of them and too little available time to pay full attention. If a child was engaging in dangerous behaviour, there needed to be a short sharp reminder, and there were no other viable alternatives to the smack.

The enduring system in my Grandma’s time was that the unprepared older siblings were assigned a younger child to take care of and that person and was a stand-in mother and father until the child reached adulthood. With their immaturity and lack of experience, the only tool siblings had in the arsenal was the smack.  In serious cases of defiance a parent would step in and rectify the problem. While mother was putting most of her labour into managing the heavy domestic chores, father would often be away either employed or attending farm duties. Parents had to be stern, because the success of the whole family structure rested on obedience and teamwork. There were many stories of how a child lapsed for a moment, only to be lost in a river, fallen off a horse or come to grief. Child mortality rates were very high.

There were fire, unregulated vehicles, anxious mules, angry bulls, pigs, goats, water holes, water tanks, animal traps, guns, silos, crocodiles, becoming lost in the bush, lethal substances and endless other possibilities to snare children. And if the older child taking care of the infant was irresponsible, there could be a double tragedy. My grandparents, out of love,  were unyielding with the corporal punishment and discipline of their children, but none of them died and no one wandered off. But still there was an accidental shooting, a snake bite due to a child bending the rules, one was run over by a truck through not paying attention, another one hit in the eye with a full bucket of milk, my mother slipped into the bull pen for a challenge, and had a close shave with an angry Jersey bull, using a plank to ward it off. Another child sat on an ants nest when told not to. Imagine what they could have done without supervision? They learned very early in life to cope in times of adversity, and as adults successfully navigated through life in varying degrees.

Now many of us feel our modern society is much safer than it used to be, so there should be no need to be harsh. Perhaps we don’t need to be so protective of our children. However if we examine modern life with a steady magnifying glass, we might think again. Nine year old children are being lured by drug traffickers. Child sexual abuse is rife. Traffic accidents, poisonings, swallowing objects, accidental chokings, abductions and a string of dangers are still out there. Young unsupervised children and teens are too often being lured from their homes through the internet. Parents are working outside the home more than ever in this last half century. Children are being left in the care of grand parents and others, and it is often that while the parents are away, innocent and unprepared children are left to roam freely.

In most cases there is little time left over at home for tired parents to do the conditioning necessary to develop their children, which once again parallels earlier times. So in desperation, when children  break or loose expensive things, and won’t eat their breakfast, pick up their toys, got to bed on time, take a shower and get in the car when it’s time to go:- these same stresses effect parents who will in desperation, let out a perpetual stream of verbal abusive. You idiot, you are so lazy, I wish you were never born, I hate you, you are so ungrateful, no one could love you, nobody likes you, I’ll give you away if…, and so one. I’ve heard it all. But on the other hand, it is also true some parents go too far with physical punishment. So is which worse, the one above, or a responsibly snacked child who knows he or she is loved, but may be emotionally damaged? For the children who have been seriously assaulted in the name of discipline – we already have laws to deal with that. True, there will always be people who become parents who are just not equipped for the job. So if we legislate on the smack, should we also outlaw verbal abuse? What then is the future of the perpetually disobedient child? We all know one, surely. Will foster care numbers balloon? There are lots of questions and few answers available. It could mean later in life some parents will give up all together if parenting gets too hard, and depending on their circumstances, leave the child to his or her own devices. I think of the difficulties of being a sole unsupported parent. That’s when the child’s story could ramp up a notch to be the adult who is heading for the criminal justice system.

So the questions are - is it the child who is not smacked, but left feeling worthless and unloved and very uncertain about his or her personal value in the world better off than the one who is smacked, and possibly emotionally and physically injured? Does the smacked child become the wary adult? And are does the insecure not smacked, sometimes pampered child more vulnerable to be lured by stronger personalities into harmful pursuits. Who is better off? Available evidence reveals that the encouraged, highly pampered overly rewarded and overly praised child could develop into the needy over sensitive adult. So where is the balance, and where are the tipping points? We can only guess.

I’ve raised my children but still don’t come down firmly on any side. Maybe it should still be left to the judgement of the parent, without government intervention. It’s true, non-smacking is a very successful strategy in some Nordic countries, but they have generous subsidies to allow parents to spend more time with their children. If the Australian government was prepared to take this on, I think it would probably drift toward their side. I can’t see that is likely.

So what if we stop smacking? I will let you be the judge.