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“A dangerous tool”

But dig a little deeper and some differing opinions appear. Research published last year suggested that smacking might not be such a completely unsuccessful technique after all. A study by Marjorie Gunnoe, a psychology professor at Calvin College in the US state of Michigan, found that children who were smacked up until the age of six did better at school and were more optimistic about their lives than those never hit by their parents. They were more likely to do voluntary work, and keener to go to university.

Professor Gunnoe said, “The claims made for not spanking children fail to hold up. They are not consistent with the data. I think of spanking as a dangerous tool, but there are times when there are jobs big enough for a dangerous tool. You just don’t use it for all your jobs.” However, Professor Gunnoe’s study also found that children who were still being smacked over the age of six started to show negative effects, such as being involved in more fghts, and the longer a child was smacked, the more negative effects the child showed.

Someone else who feels that the anti-smacking theories need some balance is Aric Sigman, psychologist and author of The Spoilt Generation . He says, “ … spanking is certainly not violence. It is almost always done with good intention: parents are not intending to hurt their own children, [but] merely to protect them. There is a marvelous Yiddish word that captures beautifully the essence of how the vast majority of the world’s parents really interpret so-called legalised violence towards our own children every day: a “ potch ”, which falls somewhere between a hard tap and a mild smack on the backside, hand-delivered out of love and concern over a child’s wellbeing.”

Who, me?

When asked, most parents I spoke to fell into the “Never smack” or the “Have smacked once or twice but don’t generally approve of it” camps – very few openly admit to smacking on a regular basis. However, someone must be doing it, as a Department of Health study in 1995 suggested that as many as 91 per cent of children in the UK had been smacked – and, shockingly, three-quarters of children had been smacked before the age of one. In the States, a 2008 survey showed that 77 per cent of men, and 65 per cent of women agreed that a child sometimes needs a “good, hard spanking.” A 2006 survey in Australia found that 69 per cent of people said it is sometimes necessary to smack a “naughty” child.

Research in this area is tricky and emotive. One stumbling block is the issue of the smack itself – most people would see a difference between a light tap that is meant to dissuade from immediate danger or correct out-of-control behaviour once or twice in a child’s life, and a hard slap that is intended to hurt or humiliate that is meted out on a regular basis. Some people would also differentiate between a smack that was intended to “discipline” a child, and one that was intended to punish. And is a slap across the legs for a toddler who can’t yet understand reason more or less justifable than a slap

I think of spanking as a

dangerous tool, but there are times when there are jobs big enough for a dangerous tool.

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