Smacking Ban – Protecting Kids or Criminalizing Parents? What Do You Think?

[Scoobychick]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to start a discussion about the smacking ban and whether it’s truly helping children—or just making parenting even harder.

I completely support protecting children from harm, but I believe this law is misguided and potentially damaging to families. Instead of tackling real abuse and neglect, the government has criminalized responsible parents who use occasional smacking as discipline.

🔹 Are we focusing on the wrong problem?
🔹 Should the government be prioritizing real child protection failures instead?
🔹 Does this law take away too much parental authority?

Many parents already struggle to set boundaries, especially with the growing influence of social media and peer pressure. Now, with this law, some fear that even light discipline could lead to social services intervention. Meanwhile, children in truly abusive situations continue to fall through the cracks because agencies are overwhelmed or ineffective.

💬 What do you think? Share your thoughts below!
📊 Vote in the poll too! 👇

I agree it should be banned. 3 times recently I have seen parents hit their children in public. Imagine what happens in private. Maybe a ban would make no difference but it might- even for one child.

Sorry you won’t be able to hit your kids anymore @Scoobychick

England is really behind on this issue. This debate has been done and moved on in other nations/countries. I don't think people realise how regressive England has become in recent years, with rhetoric pushed out by right wing parties and media.

I totally support the ban. It provides absolute clarity for parents. Sadly, children will continue to be abused behind closed doors but this change will certainly modify the behaviour of some parents and be beneficial for their children.

It still won't stop the parents who will abuse their children.

Why is it an either or in your mind. In my mind it is protecting children BY criminalising parents who abuse them through physical punishment.

There's no good excuse for hitting a child, you can't teach a child not to be physically abusive by being physically abusive. If you have to resort to smacking then you are not doing a good job of teaching your child positive behaviours.

"Protecting children or criminalising parents?"

What an odd "or". It's protecting children by criminalising parents who use physical abuse to discipline.

The evidence is absolutely clear that smacking children causes harm that is measurable in adulthood. There is no place for state sanctioned violence towards the most vulnerable in our society. As far I am concerned you can no more be a good parent who hits their children than you can be a good husband who hits their wife. Violence in domestic relationships is poison, and normalising that to children is setting them up to expect and perpetuate violence in their later relationships. Far better to teach them that hitting is an absolute red line that we never cross.

This.

Wales and Scotland have banned it already.

Maybe the OP should ask people in Scotland and Wales how it has been useful or not.

I smacked my then 4yr old son once 20yrs ago and it still haunts me.
I was angry at him for his behaviour but it was me who lost control.
There is never any need for physical violence against a child.

Thank you. The main issue isn't being dealt with. Children misbehave. Even the best of them. Sometimes it's not appropriate to draw a picture and discuss instead 😅

Fully support banning smacking. I’m not a parent, but I was a smacked child. People who support smacking point out that all they do is a light tap, that it didn’t harm them and that it won’t stop real abusers.

It would most certainly have stopped my parents who did rather more than ‘tap’ me and my brother, though not out of malice - they did it because they didn’t know any better. As the kind of people who’d be horrified at the idea of breaking the law, a ban would have prevented it. The problem is that how much force is too much is entirely subjective - as I say, I was more than tapped, but my parents seemed to think as long as only hands were used it wasn’t so bad.

Yes, it affected me.

Make it all illegal so everyone knows where they stand. Prosecute offenders.

Will the smacking ban stop the punching broken bones starvation and kicking and rape. The social workers always believe the stories the parents make up. These parents are excellent manipulators

I support a total ban.

A total ban means no grey area - a child reports their parent hitting them at home, that's a crime immediately. No way for a parent to try to justify it as reasonable chastisement. It will be easier to punish abusers because they won't have a defence to hide behind.

My parents smacked my sister and I as children. But they used a wooden cane. My sister got it a lot. I was a "good" child - I would do whatever I was told/asked etc. I can still feel that cane on the back of my bare thighs for my sister and I playing tennis in a place outside my dad felt we shouldn't (with hindsight we could have gotten hurt, but we were aware of the one danger and were both making certain it wasn't an issue). It's only now, in my 40's, I'm starting to realise just how my adult self has been shaped, and not in a good way, by the fear of that cane throughout childhood.

Smacking children doesn't teach them right from wrong. It teaches them the people that are supposed to love and protect them will hurt them physically if they mess up or don't do as they're told. It doesn't teach them to think for themselves.

I have 3 sons. Ages 13-20. All of them are kind, respectful young men. Without the need to smack them ever.

No it won't, but what it will do is remove any possible argument or 'judgement call' on whether the abuse was a light smack or a hit.

Everyone will know that any degree of hitting is illegal.

100% it should be banned.

Why is it ok to hit a child but not an adult?

It's disgusting parenting.

I don't think it should be banned. I think the current law goes far enough.

The argument that hitting is necessary to get children to behave used to be used to justify hitting women.

No, the most vulnerable, most dependent people in society shouldn't be the only ones it's legal to hit. It should be banned.

It won't criminalise parents. They will be warned and offered a parenting course to help them develop better ways of disciplining their children. If they refuse to obey the law repeatedly then yes, they would face criminal charges.

What it will stop is parents who believe that they have a legal right to chastise their children physically and who carry this out instead of using more appropriate methods.

It will also stop the legal right to chastise defence in child abuse cases where hitting children is part on an ongoing harmful pattern of parenting.

We’ve had this law in Scotland for quite a few years now.

responsible parents don’t assault their children

its high time England caught up

violence to children is never justified

For those declaring it's the only way to managing misbehaving children, how on earth do you think the many many countries where it is illegal to hit children manage?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_corporal_punishment_laws

This shows the global picture.

England is becoming a strange outlier in Europe in this.

It has to change. Parents have to know it is not okay to hit their children, to cause them pain and fear instead of developing parenting skills.

But it’s appropriate to assault them instead?

There are plenty of ways to discipline a child in between drawing pictures and smacking.

I totally reject the 'light tap argument' It makes me remember a conversation in a church group about disciplining children and how to escalate it if slapping didn't work.

To keep control you have to keep escalating - using humiliation, shaming the child in various ways, increasing force and using implements. This was my childhood experience - living in perpetual fear of being hurt and humiliated and it was fairly widely shared within the community I lived in.

Eventually what happens is the child becomes old enough to fight back or they get out, however they can - often into unsafe environments.

I hear you. It’s never ‘just’ a smack is it? I was slapped round the face (publicly), had my hair pulled, all sorts. My mother would be looking at criminal prosecution now for some of her behaviour towards me.