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! 👇

@Nighttimenope I'm a primary school teacher and in my experience, spanning 30 years, the children you describe as having "no respect for authority" and "misbehaving" are often children from homes where parenting is strictly authoritarian and smacking and other forms of physical chastisement are a strong feature of their lives. Thankfully, the profession is interested in the underlying reasons for children struggling in this way and supporting them; the correlation is usually very clear. No teacher ever is going to be thankful that a caregiver decides to use smacking as a parenting-tool in order to teach their child to 'behave'.

OP, my heart sinks a bit at your responses, which feel strangely dispassionate. Are you a parent yourself or perhaps someone with young children in your life?

This really isn't about reining in and controlling wayward children. It is about the fact that we teach respect and emotional regulation by creating respectful environments and relationships where children learn co-regulation from stable, responsive and warm parent figures. Parents don't need permission enshrined in law to assault their children. They may need supportive structures in their lives to manage external (and internal) factors which cause parental stress and dysregulation in order to learn to parent more effectively.

Yes, smacking should be banned. As not only it is “violent” or “traumatizing”, it simply doesn’t work. Look at the machete yielding/balaclava wearing boys involved with stabbings and gangs. Or the Southport lad. They clearly don’t come from “gentle parenting” backgrounds.

You have a very obedient child! I had quite the opposite experience once. I parked outside my house, and my son suddenly broke free, ran into the road, and started dancing. Just as a car came speeding around the corner, I instinctively jumped over my bonnet, grabbed his arm, and pulled him out of the way just in time. If I hadn’t acted quickly, he could have been killed.

As soon as I started telling him off, he began screaming that I had broken his arm—trying to deflect responsibility. My neighbour, who hadn’t seen the car, only heard my son shouting. They could have reported me, completely misunderstanding what had happened!"

Thank you! Totally agree!

Did you report them? There are already laws in place regarding the acts you described?

He wasn’t trying to “deflect responsibility” he was reacting in a shocked way instinctively. He needed to be told firmly that what he did was dangerous, that he could have been very badly hurt or killed, but smacking wouldn’t have helped in your situation. Regarding the neighbour, a simple explanation of what happened would have solved that problem.

I have a wonderful child, but she’s not perfect, she has misbehaved and she’s currently a moody little thing, practicing her tween eye-rolls and pointing out all the ways I’m hideously embarrassing, but she’s human, she is a person with emotions and mood. I won’t be able to teach her to reign in her attitude and speak to people appropriately by hitting her.

I've no idea why but I thought it had already been banned years ago anyway 🤷‍♀️

It’s lazy, controlling and abusive to raise a hand to a child, you sound awful. Who challenges a passing in law to make it illegal for grown adults to smack defenceless children.

What a ridiculous post

Because it sets a tone that while it likely won’t stop many, it is not accepted as ok which in current law it is

Patronising tone. We could say your methods are manipulative and emotionally abusive.
So we are back to talking about feelings and rewarding negative behaviour with attention - and a million Mumsnet threads about why behaviour is so poor and children grow up with no resillience and mental health problems.
I personally never have and never would do it.
Use some critical thinking though about a message it would send to the parents - that discipline is wrong.

I completely support the ban. I've never smacked my children or threatened to smack them. I've always had boundaries with them and they know how to behave appropriately because I respect them and they in turn respect me back.

I was smacked as a child. It absolutely affected me negatively. People who say they were smacked as a child but claim it did them no harm probably just haven't processed it properly.

The smacking ban will flood an already overwhelmed child protection system with minor cases, leaving less time for children truly at risk. This added strain on overstretched services could lead to more preventable deaths and ruined lives. Instead of preventing harm, the ban may push some parents to be more discreet, resorting to harsher punishments behind closed doors—making it even harder to protect vulnerable children.

Is there evidence of this happening in countries where smacking is already banned or this just your own unfounded opinion?

You've nailed it—it's pointless! The government is just pretending to take action. This ban will flood an already overwhelmed system with thousands of petty cases, while real abusers won’t care. The law already states that if smacking leaves a mark, it’s illegal. Why add more bureaucracy instead of focusing on protecting truly vulnerable children?

I don't know any one in real life who was "smacked" as a child who feels okay about it or feels it was an acceptable form of punishment. We are all resentful, have issues with poor self esteem/mental health, and poor relationships with our parents.

I've never felt the need to smack my children whatsoever.

It's not acceptable to hit dogs or other animals, elderly people in care homes, or anyone else vulnerable in society- why children??? Especially when RESEARCH and EVIDENCE shows it does more harm than good!

It quite simply isn't acceptable to lay a hand on anyone else in society- it's assault pure and simple.

People defending this are just trying to defend their own short-comings to make themselves feel better about poor parenting choices. If I try and speak to my mum about how we were hit as children, she will defend herself until she's blue in the face.

Parents who smack their children in public while they're bundled up in winter or spring clothing should be fined, imprisoned, and have their children taken into care—on the assumption that they must be whipping and burning them with cigarettes behind closed doors? That kind of logic is dangerous. It shifts focus away from real abuse cases and floods an already overwhelmed system with minor incidents, making it even harder to protect children who are truly at risk.

Is smacking without leaving a mark really violent? The law already covers this—if a smack leaves a mark, it’s illegal. So why waste time on a ban that changes nothing?

And as for your examples—were these children smacked, abused, or just exposed to violent video games and movies? There’s a big difference between discipline and real harm. If smacking automatically led to violence, every previous generation would have been criminals. The real issue is broken families, lack of discipline (not just smacking), and a culture that glorifies violence.

If you can't be bothered to out-think and out-manouvre a literal child and so have to resort to hitting them to impose your will, you have failed as a parent. It's lazy parenting.

If it's illegal to hit an adult why on earth should it be legal to hit a child?

Assault without leaving a mark is still assault- that's covered under law already. Just not for children.

OP your posts are really frightening.

@Scoobychick if your partner slapped you round the face but didn't leave a bruise would you consider that acceptable and not worthy of prosecution?

Should be 100% smacking ban. Smacking is a loss of control by the parent. Extremely poor parenting and anger issues. Why on earth would you ever lay a hand on your children.

Sounds like you need parenting classes rather than working out how to hit without leaving a mark!

OP, MN convention is that you reference the poster you're responding to, otherwise it becomes hard to follow the conversation.

It's not 'just' a smack though. For every actual smack, there is the harm done by the threat of smacking or similar physical chastisement hanging in the air when smacking is used as an acceptable parenting tool, colouring a child's every interaction and experience.