Do you have a feminist perspective on smacking children?

There is something else about the approaches that include smacking e.g. as advocated by James Dobson, they involve an adversarial approach to childcare. Which would not be something that appeals to me.

Both not smacking and feminism come out of human rights, for me.

I also think the pattern is that smacking tends to be more common amongst people with more conservative and traditional ideas about life in general.

Interesting thread

I was thinking about starting a thread in the Feminism section to ask whether feminists tend to be anti-smacking - and here there is one already!

I'm with SGB on this one.

What HerBeBolloX has said.

We don't smack our children because we want them to know that nobody has the right to do that to them.

I have, on odd occasions, physically removed a tantruming child but I did feel uncomfortable with me using my physical advantage over my child in that way - it did feel disrespectful of their bodily integrity so I stopped doing it. I decided to just ignore them and leave them as they are. I sort of figure that young children need a right good tantrum once in a while to get things out of their system.

I find with my eldest (7) the best thing to do with her when she is behaving badly is ask her if she is alright/what she is cross about/does she want a cuddle?

That makes me sound like a right smug modern parent but I do also lose patience and snap and shout.

My kids just aren't very naughty though and tend to stop nonsense when sternly told to - I guess we are lucky.

dorisnextdoor - so what sanctions do you use for your young children? What non-primitive punishment would you use to deter a small child from hurting the baby? What would you do if you had a small child who was hell bent on putting themselves in danger e.g. darting across roads or escaping from their car seat. Do you consider enforcing time out an abuse of power?

I don't personally think smacking is an effective parenting tool for me - but that is based on my own circumstances. It is astonishingly judgemental and stupid to judge other parents in the way you do, simply because they have chosen a different approach.

There is a world of difference between an abusive parent lashing out - whether verbally or with their fists - and an ordinary parent who smacks.

"in the Scandanavian countries where smacking was banned, there was a drop in the number of children murdered by their parents"

and nothing else changed over those years, which could have explained that

small details like having parents who had not lived through world war II could have had no effect compared to a change in the legislation on corporal punishment

I wasn't going to come back on this but it's pissed me off all day so I will.
"Just as "Dont make me do this" is often said to a woman before she is hit." yes, thanks SO much for comparing me to an abusive partner. OBVIOUSLY I'm going to punch my DH now as well.

It's kind of the point for the child to realise that it IS them that is responsible for the disciplinary measure, whether that is a tap on the bum or being sent to bed early, sat on the naughty step or whatever. Teaching them that actions have consequences and that those consequences aren't going to be pleasant for them helps them to learn responsibility.

WHEN he's older and can be reasoned with and have it all explained out properly so he understands, then the consequences will be appropriate to him then.

Also, violence often exists on a continuum. So while some parents will smack and only smack, for others the smacks, turn into slaps, turn into punches etc. I was told that in the Scandanavian countries where smacking was banned, there was a drop in the number of children murdered by their parents.

But Goth you could tell your DD off for putting her brother on the naughty step, for example, while you do it yourself. Discipline/guidance is an authority thing.
I agree, smacking isn't in my big Box of Good Things, but it's not always a bad thing in some situations.

This is going to sound poncey, but while my anti-smacking stance isn't borne of feminism per se, it sits in the same 'things for a better world' box in my head. It's more to do with non violence, respect and not being a hypocrite. How could I tell DD off for hitting and then hit her?

agree that modern sockets are not dangerous, but would be wary of assuming that small children in high tree houses are necessarily safe - I grew up in a rural area outside the UK where safety precautions were not the norm - three of our closest neighbours' children died in farm accidents (falling in a slurry pit, kicked by a horse, falling off the side of a tractor and under the wheels, the children involved were from different families). There are often high rates of childhood mortality in other places and times, which are just unthinkable to us.

I am not prepared to risk my dd learning road sense the hard way, and if that means using reins or even smacking, so be it. She is not yet capable of grasping how dangerous the roads are, so it is my responsibility to keep her safe.

With fires, I'd be more worried about them playing with fire, or throwing toys near it than that they'd wander over and stick their hands in. If there are always plenty of adults around, that risk is minimal, but the reality for most households is that dc are not being watched at every moment.

(sorry, perhaps should have said again - obviously that's an opinion that I don't think my child would have learned that lesson so well if I'd given conflicting messages and not trying to present it as an argument that parents who smack are awful or anything like that AT ALL)

I just remembered a story about us. DD must have been just over 3 because we were in a department store that had only just opened (googled when it did). I remember having an exceptionally bad day, and being really tired and hungry. But for some bizarre reason I thought that the end of THIS day was the best time to just stop and get her some new shoes while we were coming home through town anyway.

Also being tired and hungry, she objected half way through trying on shoes and tried to run off. I picked her up and held her, and she descended into a tantrum. She'd taken off her shoes before this point and I sat her down to try and put them back on, but she started kicking her feet to prevent me. Instead of just shoving them in a bag I carried on anyway, and though she was pulling her feet AWAY from me one of them caught me right on the side of my head. It hurt so much that I started to lash out, despite having always been against hitting, but she also realised that I was about to; and (just like I would normally do if a situation between children looked like it might escalate into aggressive behaviour) she quickly said ''member we don't hit people'

If we normally hit for misbehaviour, she wouldn't have had that lesson instilled in such a fundamental way that at the age of three she was confident in taking action to prevent someone bigger and stronger than her from hitting her only using words. Because she wouldn't have had that deep seated belief that no-one at all had the right to hit her. And I'm proud to have played a part in instilling that in her.

It has taken longer for her to learn the control needed to stop herself lashing out in anger - but I don't see how that learning process would have been aided by giving her conflicting messages that in some circumstances it was acceptable to hit.

No feminist perspective per se; my children got smacked for... darting into the road.

Usual punishment was loss of privileges, early bed, no games [not much TV watched so a pretty ineffective punishment.]

A couple of weeks later I got screamed at by a mother (yes, I was doing the school run) for pointing out a nice fluffy squirrel in the tree. I then compared it to the gruesomely burst squirrel in the road.

"Don't run into the road, it would make daddy very sad if you were dead like the squirrel."

Apparently I was psychologically harming my kids. In their 20s, they don't seem permanently damaged.

As it happens, I went to a school were boys into their teens were beaten; remarkably ineffective if the teens in question are accustomed to being hurt playing rugby etc. Diminished the teachers more than the boys, and its effect on me was to make me a convincing liar.

WhollyGhost, I see it the other way round- I can understand that sleep deprivation, anxiety, and fear can lead to a one off situation where hitting out at a child about to run into the road can happen. I don't agree it's the right thing to do, but I can understand it.
I think that 'I plan to hit you when I feel like it, during your childhood, to maintain discipline'- ie making hitting the child premeditated is wrong.

I agree SinicalSal that children are naturally dependent, but feel that means we have a greater responsibility not to hit. Adults with learning disablities, and people with later stage Alzheimers (sp?) are also depenedent, but we would not agree to using smacking to discipline them.

Anastasia makes a good point about it being about learning, and I think this is also key- when you see a parent smack their child, and then the child turns round and hits them....gives the best example. I think we believe that violence is wrong- and I'm guessing that the view on here is that it is an overarching feminist perspective- then we should want to instill that in our children, and the best start to that is not hitting them.

Thanks LRD. :)

Re the hurt/humiliation thing - the first time ever I smacked DS, he was shocked more than anything else. In terms of hurting him, it would have hurt less than him banging his leg on the chair (a frequent occurrence) and it certainly wasn't done to humiliate him - the deterrent is, IMO, to stop him doing whatever it was that caused the smack to be administered in the first place. He doesn't want to be smacked - so he learns not to do the things that will bring the threat of a smack.

I don't know - probably deeply flawed but it does seem to work! I think he'd rather I'd smacked him for not picking his toys up when asked, than do what I did, which was bag them up and put them in the garage (an excellent strategy that works for about 6m, IME, before it has to be done again).

Having said that, there is a woman in my playgroup whose DS is v. similar age to DS and he doesn't give a shit about being smacked (it's more common where I live than in the UK) and even offers his bum for smacking rather than stop doing whatever mischief he's up to. So smacking is ineffectual on her DS.

I think that if you're hoping to raise children not to use violence or threats of violence against others (except maybe in self-defense) then part of that is actually modelling that behaviour to them. So I think that there is a conflict between feeling able to use physical chastisement against children while we accept it isn't a suitable way to behave in other relationships. Particularly because a huge role of parenting is teaching your children how to have other relationships.

I don't think it makes people bad parents to have smacked - I do think that there are ALWAYS ways of dealing with the situation which model better conflict resolution skills for our children - which surely give them a better starting position to intrinsically understand consent and self-determination issues from. I don't think this is limited to smacking but is common to many of the ways we (in general in society) discipline small children.

I also think that by the time you get to the point of smacking you've usually missed a number of opportunities to intervene in a more educational* way already. Though I think that's exceptionally hard when people parent in isolation anyway.

*educational probably isn't quite the right word, but in a way that teaches them more about why to do or not to do something or more socially acceptable behaviour.

I ALSO don't think that using force for restraint is comparable to smacking - I mean, I wouldn't really worry about if I had consent to grab/shove/pull an adult about to step out in front of a car. Or about to harm someone else. But I wouldn't go around shoving and pulling people who did things I didn't want them to do or because I was fed up with them. I don't think a protective action is the same as a punishing action.

And, I also don't want to bring up children who do or don't do things because they're afraid of the consequences, but who behave with respect to others because that's the norm for them. I think getting through to children with a smack means that they're behaving for the wrong reasons.

Though I'm not sure that I think it's a feminist issue, except that I don't think children should be exempt from the general way I would expect to treat other people.

I think I could just have said I mostly agree with HerBex :) and that I said 'I think' far too many times but this is all just opinion.