Is there anyone in England that still agrees with smacking their children (in 2025)?

[MintHare]

Just to clarify I was smacked as a child (2002) and have siblings latest being 15 (2010) where also smacked. Whilst I don’t think I was abused or anything I don’t think it’s something parents should do. However my and my mum got into a decision about the topic and she reckoned it’s something common nowadays just kept behind closed doors, which is something I disagreed with. But it got me thinking and just wanted to see what other experiences were on here. To be clear I do t want this to be a high judgment post or anything just something I was curious about. Thanks for any response

I struggle with this and don't know where I will fall as a parent. I was physically abused as a child (beating with objects, having things thrown at me in rages, dragging by hair, even attempted smothering as an infant that was interrupted luckily) and I don't think I could use any form of physical dicipline as it would be traumatic for me, given my history. However, I am horrified by modern permissive and gentle parenting styles, and think that rare episodes of physical correction like smacking on the bottom while the parent is completely calm and not shouting at the child to abruptly end bad behaviour, can and maybe even should be a part of the parenting style I think is morally correct. I actually believe I will be doing my children a disservice by not diciplining them in that way, but I will try my best to be an authoritative parent who raises pleasant and prosocial children without using physical dicipline, even if it means compensating in other ways to acheive first-time obedience, which is my personal goal in parenting.

I’m sorry to hear of your childhood, but wanting your children to obey you first time is concerning. They will be humans who make mistakes, not robots.

You are there to teach your children right and wrong, to raise them to be independent, functioning members of society and there are many ways to do this between permissive parenting and physical punishment. It’s not one or the other.

From what you wrote, you will instil fear in your children and they will obey you through that fear, not because you’ve actually parented them. This is particularly concerning if you go on to have daughters.

It is never acceptable to hit children.

Have you accessed therapy to work through your childhood?

It still happens sadly, especially in some cultures where its considered the correct thing to do. Making it illegal might not stop it completely, but at least it would be sending out the right message.

Of course children are humans who make mistakes, but first-time obedience is the goal, and to me means that my children will recieve a consequence for all instances of bad behaviour and not "warnings". They will know what the standard of behaviour is, and of course they will make mistakes, but there won't be any of the faffing around I see from other parents with endless warnings followed by punishment when the parent has had enough - I honestly think it's unfair on children to teach them that they can get away with un undefined amount of bad behaviour until their parent gets angry and randomly punishes them, maybe after three warnings and maybe after ten. After the situation has passed is the time for conversations with the child, not during. Children have limited impulse control, and they should fear that if they hit another child, or intentionally break a toy, say, that they will have a consequence, like being removed from a fun situation or having an item they enjoy taken away. Just because a behaviour is natural or expected of a child, doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to address it from the moment it occours.

I had a child in 2001 and never smacked him. The most “physical” I had to get was to restrain him or pick him up kicking and screaming when he did dangerous things like sit down in the road to have a tantrum.

There is only ONE REASON someone would physically discipline their child.

It's lazy parenting and because they can. eta (that's two actually)

They would never dare hit an adult with whom they disagreed.

I don't have children, but I was smacked as a child. It was rare and only when I did something really bad and dangerous, and even then it was a light smack to the back of the legs. No one 'beat me to submission'.

My boss has a child who is 7. He has been brought up to 'use his words' and they talk through issues together. But I have heard my bosses wife in pieces down the phone, crying and getting to the end of her tether because her son refuses to listen and won't stop kicking her and screaming at her. I often sit here in silence thinking 'that kid needs a smack'.

I was smacked 3 times as a child, when really naughty. I don’t blame my mum for those occasions and actually it helped me know what I shouldn’t do.
It was quicker and more poignant than a long explanation or some other punishment. One of the times I remember feeling relieved it was a smack on the thighs and not a long drawn out emotional blackmail conversation.

1990s child

I think most people don't want to admit that it was scary and did damage them. I was smacked a lot and was often scared of my parents. I don't have the same respect for them now that I would have had if they had controlled their tempers better. They don't know this, but I feel it inside.

Sorry really long one.

I think “smacking” would first need to be defined. A quick scan through the first lot of replies and I can see the words “beating” and “abusive”. I think when people think of “smacking” there are certain connotations or assumptions that come to mind

• it’s done as a result of a loss of temper or control
• it’s accompanied by aggressive shouting
• it’s accompanied by aggressive physical action like shoving, pushing, etc
• it’s an unhealthy pattern in the household, i.e done often
• it’s done to frighten the child

And sadly I’m sure this is the experience of many children who are smacked (and the past experience of many now-adults who were smacked). If a parent is smacking like this, I totally disagree and think it’s harmful to the child.

But I personally don’t think it’s a black and white issue. I have smacked one of my children. My child (at the time 2ish YO) wriggled free from my hand and ran onto the road. After I lifted them back onto the curb beside the car I firmly but calmly explained that they must never ever do that again and mummy was going to smack their bum for running onto the road. I smacked them on the bottom, they cried, we had a cuddle. They never ran onto the road again. I appreciate there’s every chance they may have never done it again anyway, but that was a risk I was unwilling to take. My child was a little delayed in their speech and their level of understanding just wasn’t that great at this age. To me, a smack on the bum felt like the safest and genuinely most loving option - my child needed an immediate negative consequence that would make absolutely sure they would never ever repeat the behaviour. A long winded speech about road safety wouldn’t have landed - as I say their understanding just wasn’t there. And at that age they couldn’t have made the connection if the consequence had come later (no tv time after nap, no treats etc). I truly believe in that instance smacking them was the right call to make and to this day still can’t think of an age-appropriate alternative that would have had the same impact.

However, I read another thread earlier and saw people talking about being smacked as a kid for things like not eating dinner or wrecking furniture or being afraid of going to the doctor. I don’t know who could agree with this. This is just a clear abuse of power, a parent using physical punishment to control “undesirable” behaviour in a child. It should absolutely never be used for kids just being kids! IMO that is the very different to the experience I described.

So I guess my answer to the question of whether or not I agree with smacking is that it depends on a lot of factors. I don’t think any decent person in their right mind agrees with physically abusing children. Or beating them into submission. But I don’t think that means we should completely disregard smacking (when it’s done for the best interest of the child, in a controlled manner in the context of a loving relationship) as a very rare but sometimes necessary form of discipline. Especially if the behaviour is reckless or could pose a danger to the child or others.

I sometimes wonder how many parents nowadays feel at a total loss of how to discipline young children and their desperation causes them to act in ways that ironically might damage their children more than a quick, one-time smack would - screaming at them to scare them into submission, telling them to get out of their sight, constant timeouts, long conversations about behaviour that are totally beyond the realm of understanding for the child so actually cause more confusion, inconsistency and distress.

How is it being done? Why is it being done? What is the bigger context of the parent child relationship? How often is it happening?Depending on the answers to those questions I think it can be an appropriate form of discipline used incredibly sparingly by loving parents. But of course it can also be a form of abuse inflicted by unloving parents.

I can completely understand why anyone who has ever had negative experiences with it as a child view it as a totally no-go area and might struggle to ever see warrant for it. I think I was smacked maybe twice in my entire childhood and it was in the context of a loving, safe relationship with both my parents so I guess this is probably all easier for me to say than it might be for others.

It definitely happens.
What gets to me is the generation that smacked my generation (I'm late 40s) are now into old age. In my mind hitting children is no different than hitting anyone else weaker and more fragile. However, I'm pretty sure my parents would be appalled if they found out any of their friends were being "smacked" by their adult children. Why would that generation think it's okay to hit children, but not the elderly?
I'm not going to hit anyone, but bloody hell, I was hit for crying, hit for making mistakes, hit for repeating a word I'd heard my dad use but didn't understand, hit for "being rude", hit for making noise...imagine if society hit older people using the same excuses.

I think you might be surprised at how common physical chastisement or smacking is in some communities. As a teacher, at the first school I worked at most children were hit in some form by their parents. They spoke about it quite openly and described not liking it.

We no longer live in England, but visited recently and were near the school I used to work at. I saw two children being hit in public over the three days we were there. Where we live now any physical chastisement is illegal, so you do not see this in public at all and it was shocking to see.

I like the ban, but I do think it creates too much fear. I had a child make a disclosure and when a dialogue was opened with the parent, the child immediately denied the disclosure but in their childlike fumbling of doing so, let slip that they had been threatened with removal by social services. (As in the parent had told the child this would happen if the child told people the parent was hitting them). So ultimately, the child still got hit but also a new added fear that encourages secrecy? I don’t know, but I think it’s good that the children at least know they have the right not to be hit by adults.

I once heard a podcast host, who was hit as a child, describe an interaction she had where the other person said they and their siblings were not hit as children “because we never did anything that bad.” To which the podcaster responded, “Neither did I.”

I was smacked routinely as a child, as most of my peers would have been (early 50s now) and, although I don’t have a fantastic relationship with my Mum, the smacking is not part of the reason. My children were also smacked occasionally for disobedience when they were little (early 20s now) and it was very common in my acquaintance. I only stopped because I realised I was only smacking them when out of the house, when other options weren’t available and it was lazy and inconsistent. We have a great relationship. I do however fundamentally disagree with a previous poster who said that children shouldn’t be expected to obey instructions first time. If a child does not follow a reasonable, simple request first time at the age of 4, they are going to be a nightmare at school as well as at home and this is definitely something that everyone should work towards.

That's an extremely good point.

And even if we temporarily leave aside the important parallels in children and elderly people both being generally physically weaker than young or middle-aged adults, if we were to routinely smack elderly people to punish them and/or make them change their behaviour, a large proportion of their number would be suffering from dementia or other serious cognitive decline - meaning that we would be punishing them for something that they simply don't have the capacity to understand or change, exactly like a great many children who are/were smacked.

But the way you stop a little child from being able to run into the road is by making them hold your hand or otherwise use reins. You use their small size and weakness compared to your own to restrain them and to take away their opportunities to get into danger, rather than by hitting them for making a choice that they are not old enough or developmentally mature enough to be allowed to make.

Frankly, if you as a parent don't prevent a little child from being able to run into traffic and you believe in smacking as a valid means for punishing bad behaviour, then you should smack yourself; not the child, whom you have failed to keep safe.

I take your point, but I don't think it's a fair comparison at all.

Learning to understand the need to eat healthy food and going to bed at an appropriate time are standard things that all young children need at their stage of life. By promoting/insisting on these things, you are both helping them now in their formative years and also setting them up for a wise and healthy future - unless you somehow believe that healthy eating and getting enough sleep are not basic good things for everybody.

Hitting a child is in no way helping them now, nor is it helping them learn an 'important life lesson' for the future that we hit people whenever they annoy us, ignore us or we think they need to be punished.

There's a reason why plenty of countries have laws against physically hitting other people, but (as far as I'm aware), no countries have laws against offering/encouraging people to eat healthy food or to get enough sleep!

I agree that eating healthy food etc are beneficial, but those are the goals. Many normal methods parents use to achieve those goals would be unacceptable if done to an adult. That's why the test doesn't work. (e.g. 'grounding' an adult is false imprisonment, withdrawing spending money is financial abuse, etc. Harnessing an adult so they can't escape you would be unacceptable too).

I agree that teaching a child that we hit people whenever they annoy us or ignore us is definitely a bad lesson. But I'm not sure any of these really get at the question of whether smacking is on balance helpful or harmful (exclude extreme cases, obviously, as I think there's total agreement on that). Because they just beg the question: does smacking teach the above, etc.

I'm not ultra pro-smacking (I don't do it). But I do feel a lot of arguments against smacking start by assuming the thing that they claim to demonstrate.

Like, is grounding a teenager on balance harmful or beneficial? Firstly, depends on the context. I'm not saying it's the same as smacking. But the one thing that wouldn't help us decide is to consider a different question such as: 'should we teach children that they should lock people up whenever they feel annoyed, by locking them in the basement'. That's a different question entirely. You could then take all sorts of examples of sadists who've locked people up with horrible effects, but it wouldn't actually tell you much about grounding.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. DH smacks our kids. I don't know where or how hard because he takes them upstairs to do it. They behave better for him than for me, so it seems to be working. He tells me I should smack them too but I'm not completely comfortable with it.

Bloody hell seriously?! He goes off to hide whilst he hits your kids?! Why are you allowing this? Why aren't you protecting your kids 😡

This gives me chills. Does he like to be ‘head of the household?’

I think @CloseEncountersOfTheTurdKind you and your DH need to be on the same page on discipline, and you need to be sure you understand just how much, or how little, force he is using.

I don’t have dc, I was smacked as a child in the 1960s, though not often. I saw enough gratuitous violence from teachers with rulers and straps to know I am firmly against it.

I don't have kids but I've seen lots of families raise kids, and the only time I thought a child was being damaged by parenting was when the naughty step/time out was imposed.

The kids was walked back to the step, with no communication from the parent about 100 times. I really believe that this would have more damage than a short smack on the bum.

He doesn't do it very often. I think smacking is reasonably normal in our circles so it's interesting to get other opinions. I think I need to go with him next time to see what he really does.

I obviously don't think it's right but can also see how people get to the end of their tether. I also don't think lasting damage is done by a small number of exasperated end of tether slaps to well padded bottoms when a child is putting themselves in danger.

I'm concerned about it being illegal because parents who have a real problem won't seek help. These will be the parents who most need it. My DS was in a PRU with a couple of boys who like him were sweet but really struggled with behaviour due to ADHD. I was FB friends with both mums and one probably has ADHD herself, had little work experience and was home educating him after he was excluded. She was ranting on her FB about being spotted in town slapping him when he swore at her, and given her experience with schools she would not accept help for behaviour management but even less so would she admit to doing this if she thought she might get arrested.

Just because other people do it doesn't make it ok.