Parents- what’s your background and what’s your honest opinion on smacking?

[Smidgey7]

I am completely against smacking. I grew up getting the occasional smack, my own mother still stands over smacking us although would never dare smack her grandchildren.
while I am totally against smacking and have and would never, I have certainly been in situations with my own children where I have been extremely frustrated or where they have done something unsafe and I can see how people would feel like that’s what they should do.
work as a social worker and have seen many children who have been abused with the excuse of it being a ‘smack’ and for discipline reasons. I am that person who would say something if I seen a child getting smacked in public or if someone I knew said they smacked their child.

My mum was abusive and seemed to enjoy smacking and whipping me and my brother. She took it way over the top but my dad never hit us. My dad's parents didn't believe in smacking and neither did my mum's dad. Her mum was mentally abusive though.

I've never hit my kids but they're still very small (toddler and baby) so I can't say 100% that I'd never ever do it. In the midst of huge tantrums I don't think there's anything that would get through to my DD, so smacking would be pointless anyway as it would only make the tantrum worse.

I do think there's a huge difference in what my mum did to me and a small tap for repeated misbehaviour. I don't think smacking a child a handful of times in their life makes someone an abusive parent.
I was a very well behaved child so can't understand why my mum hit me so often. She also used to punish me for my brother's behaviour which makes no sense at all.

Recently I've witnessed some awful parenting. Really loud public screaming and shouting, proper losing their shit over nothing. It's quite worrying 😕.

I forgot to add, I was smacked once when I was 12, and I being genuinely hideous. It made me feel awful, in that I knew I had pushed my mum to the point of losing control. She slapped me round the face.

I’m 40 so must have been 94 ish?

I don't understand when people say they tapped their child? Surely you hit them hard enough to cause a reaction? Otherwise what would be the point? I was hit as a child. I just think my Dad was a rubbish parent with a short temper. I ended up with a short temper and used to hit him back/smash my bedroom up. I didn't learn anything from it, I just felt angry and had no respect for my Dad.

I wasn’t smacked, I didn’t smack.
DH was hit with slippers and wooden spoons. He tried for a long time to explain to me that it taught him ‘how to behave’ except he can’t explain why it worked on him and not his brother (who was a very badly behaved teen). I think his mother didn’t enjoy having children and had no control. She also used to tell them they would get taken away by ‘the bad man’ all the time.

The only lessons being smacked ever taught me was to become secretive and lie to my parents, I was terrified of my mother. I was determined my son would not grow up terrified of me, I never smacked, he's grown to be a lovely man and we are close.

My mother (with whom I am not close at all and I'm an only child) is in a care home now with dementia. Would it be ok for me to smack her when she wanders off and gets lost? If not, what's the difference?

Omg imagine if that happened today! School would call social services.

I hope your mum felt bad about that.

Omg I've just had a flashback. I had suppressed this memory and reading the replies to this thread has made me remember.

I was under five years old, and I don't know what I had done wrong, but I was hit on my bottom with a hairbrush by my dad. I can remember my mum standing me on my bed and pulling my trousers and pants down, and showing my dad that it had left marks and she really wasn't happy about it. 🥺

Hard no for me.
Not just because the idea of ever reacting to my children with violence is horrifying, but because what does it actually teach them? 🤷🏻‍♀️
That it’s ok for someone you love to hit you? How can I tell them that hitting eachother when they are having normal sibling spats is wrong and then respond to behaviour I don’t like with hitting?
Makes no sense, and I’ve never done it.
I grew up in a house where smacking was very few and far between. It happened a couple of times, but definitely wasn’t a regular occurrence. My mum would give us a lighthearted flick around the bum with a wet tea towel if we were being cheeky, but she’d still do that now and me and my Dsis are well into adulthood 🤷🏻‍♀️😂 and it’s a running family joke that you have to give mum a wide berth if she’s got a tea towel on her shoulder 😂

I don't think being hit did me any harm.

But I also don't think it was ok. I think it was crap parenting and I would never do it. But I don't think I was harmed. I'm not using that as a justification for doing it, it's just how I feel. I certainly don't defend smacking, but I can't pretend to feel damaged by it.

I think it definitely can be very harmful though, and as I said, I'd never do it.

I would never assault my children, I have seen other children being assaulted and I have phoned the police and reported it.

It’s insanity that if I assaultes my husband I would be breaking the law and subjecting my children to domestic violence, but if I assault my child thats fine and perfectly legal.

As I said The psychological harm of being hit smacked as a child is that you think it was OK to be hit smacked. Those who internalise it and go on to maintain it is right to hit smack young children have been harmed. If you don't think it is OK to do it, then for whatever reason you have not fully internalised it - many people who were smacked do not go on to do it and they have therefore escaped that harm.

In the moment it would have hurt or been scary, presumably, whether that is accessible in your memory or not.

My mother smacked me as a child. I was a good, quiet child, and rarely misbehaved. The smackings we much more a sign of my mothers frustration, and not particularly to do with what I had done.
I knew this as clearly at 6 years old as I do now. I have never smacked my own children because I would see it as a sign that I had failed as a parent.