To be annoyed when people liken smacking a child to violence against women?

[ForestGoblin]

It's obviously not the same thing at all and quite insulting to women.

Violence is violence, there isn't a sliding scale.

I I can remember one smack and that because it was unfair and I wasn't worried about telling my mum she was wrong (My sister said I'd sworn at our neighbour)

I certainly never felt anything you have described. You, I would say had it far worse than I did.

Why is it wrong to hit a child but acceptable to send one to their room.

Because they're two completely different things?

You glibly answered the easy question but ignored the harder ones. So I will repeat them:

Why is it wrong to hit a child but acceptable to send one to their room. And if the child leaves the room is it acceptable to force him back in and lock the door? And if it isn't acceptable to force a child back in and lock the door what would we, as a society, do to a 15 year old boy who violently raped a girl?

Imprisonment is founded on violence. It is forcing someone to be where they do not want to be and if they do not consent they are physically overwhelmed and dragged there. That is an act of violence and if it was one inflicted on a child rapist I would approve. Would you?

Obviously there's a sliding scale! You're saying a light slap on the leg is the same as a hard punch in the mouth? Both might be wrong but they aren't equally wrong.

You are completely unreasonable. It is exactly the same thing. It is domestic physical violence against another human.

I don’t think anyone is lumping. While it is true that abuse is abuse, I think most understand that there is a spectrum of mild to severe to fatal abuse. So saying that when they were smacking, they were being abusive parents isn’t necessarily lumping a parent that was 98% loving and 2% abusive with a parent that was 25% loving and 75% abusive or with a parent who murders their child. You still have to call out abuse for what it is. The fact it may be a rare occurrence is a mitigating factor, not an excuse or a get out of jail free card.

I disagree with your premise. I don't accept your extreme comparisons of a child doing something naughty and being sent to their room, and a child committing a despicable criminal act and being detained for the protection of society. I don't accept that sending a child to their room is the same as prison, no.

Sending a child to their room is nothing like being “physically overwhelmed” and “dragged” to a prison cell for rape 😂

Dear Lord. You sound like Katie Price saying she’d love to go to prison.

Some of the comments here have got me wondering which is worse:

Cool, calculated smacking a child , taking the considered decision to inflict pain as punishment, correction, control and then carrying it out calmly

Or

Completely losing it, end of tether, heat of the moment, can't cope, last resort?

I haven't read the thread but I agree OP. I have seen lots of people on MN make that comparison and I think there's often a subtext indicating that it's ok and natural for a man to be in charge of his wife or to want to alter her behaviour, like in a parent child relationship. The implication is that it's just the mechanism (violence) that is wrong, not the power dynamic.

The relationship between a husband and wife is one of equals and a partnership. This is not the case for parents and children, the dynamic is (quite rightly) different. It is patronising and infantilising to women to equate the 2.

And no, this is no a defence of smacking children. It's simply a criticism of comparing smacking your DW to alter her behaviour and smacking your DC to alter their behaviour.

There definitely is a sliding scale.

I was occasionally smacked as a child. My friend was beaten and ended up in hospital. One of those things is clearly worse than the other.

I was also in an abusive relationship and I find it insulting to have people saying what I experienced in that relationship is as bad as the occasional smack. As the person who lived it it wasn't. At all.

This is just semantics. You can't be a '2% abusive parent' - what on earth does that mean in practice?! The fact is we all do things as parents that do lasting damage to our kids, whether or not we hit them. We try not to, but we do, inevitably. The question is more whether on balance we felt safe and loved. That can be the case even if parents smack occasionally. Societally, we can certainly make it clear that hitting kids is not ok. But this black and white 'there is no sliding scale of violence' worldview is nonsense. Otherwise, would you remove a child from their parents for one loss-of-temper smack when said child was being a complete dick? Clearly not. Some nuance and proportionality is needed, which is I think sorely lacking in the 'any physical punishment is abuse' posts above.

There's no difference, but if there was, violence against children is worse as they are unable to advocate for themselves like an adult

So you think it's not acceptable for a man to hit a woman, but if he hits a little girl, it's fine? How on earth have you developed that logic?

My glib reply, is that your sending a child to their room is the equivalent of the loving smack that we hear so much about.

But glibness apart I think I'm trying to make 3 points:

1. In certain situations, we as a society approve of violence against children - a 15 year old rapist will be forced into his cell. Happily they are very rare but they exist so it is facile to say things such as violence is violence and people who subject children to violence are monsters.
   We should be more honest and admit that we as a society approve of violence towards children, in very rare circumstances admittedly.

2. All children's punishments involve us doing things we wouldn't do to other adults. A child's punishment would be wrong if inflicted on an adult partner, relative or friend.
   Arguing that you wouldn't hit an adult so you shouldn't hit a child is a poor one, because you wouldn't make an adult sit on the naughty step either. If I sent an adult to their room I would be guilty of false imprisonment.
   A poster upthread put if much better than me when she said we wouldn't inflict a screen time limit on our partner but we would on our children.

3. I repeat I never hit my kids. I just understand the point the OP was making and I was trying to explain why.
   I suppose it comes down to I am willing to accept that decent people might think that smacking children is acceptable but I am not willing to accept that decent people could ever think hitting women is acceptable. Women are not there to be punished, occasionally children are.
   If the State is allowed to forcibly put children convicted of serious crimes in a cell (and I encourage that in rare and appropriate cases) I do not feel I can condemn those parents who think smacking children is a useful disciplinary tool. I might outlaw smacking but I can't bring myself to call the smackers. monsters. I have no such problem with men who hit women.

@Sayitaintso33

1) In certain situations, we as a society approve of violence against children - a 15 year old rapist will be forced into his cell. Happily they are very rare but they exist so it is facile to say things such as violence is violence and people who subject children to violence are monsters. We should be more honest and admit that we as a society approve of violence towards children, in very rare circumstances admittedly.

Forcing a rapist into a cell is based on public safety and is not purely punishment. It is necessary to force someone into a cell if they need to be in there for the safety of others and refuse to go in there voluntarily.

Hitting a child to punish them for their behaviour is not necessary or for the greater good. There are always alternative ways to reprimand them for behaviour that needs to be challenged / corrected, without resorting to physical force.

It's not a reasonable comparison.

It’s a matter of how you measure things. I personally think a parent can be 2% abusive and 98% loving in terms of division of interactions, meaning on the whole this hypothetical parent was a loving parent.

It can be the case that a child can not feel safe and not feel loved even if they were never smacked.

The fact is that smacking is abuse, it is an ACE (adverse childhood experience) and the more of them you experience as a child, then the higher your #, so therefore to me that means the higher the correlating % abusive your parent(s) were to you. This isn’t semantics, this is consequences of abusive parental behaviour.

I agree there is lack of nuance in some posts, but the statement that “any physical punishment is abuse” is not lacking nuance, it is a home truth.

Just because one would not rehome a child for a single abusive act (or even a few), that doesn’t make the act(s) themselves not abuse or the behaviour at the time not abusive.

I think too it’s subjective as to what % tips a parent into being judged loving on the whole vs abusive on the whole. Some have a zero tolerance perspective and that’s where the lack of nuance is- because to these people a 2% abusive and 98% loving parent is an abusive parent. Because zero tolerance.

Most of us know parents make mistakes and we have certain levels of tolerance based on our generation, how we were raised, our culture, and so on. For some even the 25% abusive, 75% loving is an ok parent who “tried their best” and “didn’t do me no harm” but to others that’s a horrifically abusive parent. There’s no one consensus and that’s why the subject is always contentious.

But it was just "normal" level 'light smacking', I wasn't being beaten, but different children react in different ways and by the time you realise yours is one of the ones being damaged by it, you've already damaged them. Statistically smacking does damage children and it has a strong correlation with adverse outcomes such as poor mental health, negative behaviour, risk-taking behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on.

Were you smacked as a child? I was. I don't appreciate anyone telling me I was abused and to liken it to child abuse. It really is not close.

I would not sit and comfort an abused child/woman and say I completely understand. I myself was smacked as a child! It's laughable.

I didn't say you were abused. For what it's worth I do think violence against children is abusive, but that wasn't in my post.

I said that anyone who says an adult being violent to them didn't do them any harm, whilst minimising violence against children shows it did do harm.

Normal adults don't think it's acceptable to be violent towards children.

And yes I was smacked as a child.

YABU. No one should be smacking anybody no matter what age.

@Sayitaintso33

My glib reply, is that your sending a child to their room is the equivalent of the loving smack that we hear so much about.
Not really. The equivalent to sending a child to their room is detaining an adult in a gaol cell for a few hours detention for disorderly conduct. The equivalent to a “loving” smack to a child would be the now outlawed friendly neighbourhood public flogging/whipping of an adult.

All children's punishments involve us doing things we wouldn't do to other adults
Not all. And most “punishments” of children are really removal of privileges. Not quite the same thing.

As you said “In certain situations, we as a society approve of violence against children - a 15 year old rapist will be forced into his cell.”

Yes, child criminals get put in cells just like adult criminals. So we would “violently” confine children just like we do adults as a punishment

But we no longer whip/flog adult criminals. We have also outlawed caning/hitting of children in schools as punishment. So “we” the state do not have punishments for children that involve things we wouldn’t do to adults. In parts of the U.K. parents cannot smack as punishment, the rest will soon follow suit and soon that symmetry will be fully complete granting children the same human right as an adult to not be physically assaulted as a form of punishment.

Were you smacked as a child? I was. I don't appreciate anyone telling me I was abused and to liken it to child abuse. It really is not close.

I would not sit and comfort an abused child/woman and say I completely understand. I myself was smacked as a child! It's laughable.

I didn't say you were abused. For what it's worth I do think violence against children is abusive, but that wasn't in my post.

I said that anyone who says an adult being violent to them didn't do them any harm, whilst minimising violence against children shows it did do harm.

Normal adults don't think it's acceptable to be violent towards children.

And yes I was smacked as a child.

I am saying, and I think you agree, that we as a society quite properly use violence against children. I saw it as punishment you rightly add the element of promoting public safety.

I repeat I am not here to promote smacking. I am against it. I just want society to think about what violence actually is and in what circumstances it is appropriate to be used against a child.

I am not condoning corporal punishment but there is a difference. Abusive partner abuse their partner as a form of coercive control. Most parents smack their children as a form of discipline. The role of a parent is to teach their child the difference between right and wrong. However, there are better methods than smacking.