When does a slap become abuse?

[TheRhubarb]

Now I realise this will get a very emotive response so if you feel that you are getting upset by this thread then please do hide it. I am not here to play on anyone's feelings but I have been wondering about something for a couple of days now and wanted other people's opinions.

I have seen a few threads on Mumsnet where a parent has become really angry with their child and slapped them in anger. They are then very remorseful, come onto Mumsnet and for the most part they are consoled and told that it wasn't all their fault, that it can happen to the most patient of us, etc etc.

Yet someone can post about their partner giving them a slap once, in anger, in the heat of an argument. That partner can be full of remorse but they are a violent bully and the other person a victim of domestic abuse.

So I wanted to know where the distinction lies? Why is it different to slap children and not adults? Is there any distinction between lashing out in rage once and repeated abuse over a period of time?

I'm not here to defend any form of violence or aggression by the way, I am just curious as to what is the difference between slapping a child and an adult and why they both get very different responses on Mumsnet.

Rhubarb, I think this is the case with smacking in any form - doing it to your child is somehow different to doing it to another grown up, or 'equal'. I don't know why. I do think it is different in some important way but I can't put my finger on it.

Good question,
not so much concerned with the responses these things get on MN but on why they are widely felt and perceived as different.

Watching with interest.

i think it's about control and equality

most adults strive for equality in a relationship, physical restraint/violence is about control.

it's more 'socially acceptable' to slap a child because it is deemed reasonable that you are 'controlling an unruly child' - but to want to control your partner, who is your equal, is not seen as the same.

Thanks Flightty. You put it well.

Adults in a relationship are supposed to be equals, and any kind of punishmentment, whether physical or not, by one adult suggests that they consider themselves superior to the other.

Children are not our equals, and we are responsible for their correction, in order to bring them up as responsible adults. Ideally this should not be physical but I have to admit to giving mine the occasional smack when they were irrational toddlers.

UnChartered. You could argue that a child, who is much more vulnerable than an adult, deserves slapping much less could you not?

Just to point out that I'm more curious about one-off incidents than people doing this over a period of time.

When does a slap become abuse?

as soon as it lands on the skin of another person.

So what you are saying that is in the heat of an argument, to lash out against a partner is a form of superiority?

But surely when you are slapping a child you are also exerting that superiority over a child? More so because you know full well they are not capable of retaliating.

i would certainly use that argument, OP

slapping is a sign that you have lost control of yourself, and are trying to regain it by controlling others, whatever their age

So why then is the slapping of a child more tolerated? Why is that person not labelled as a violent bully?

When you feel the need to post on MN or any other 3rd. party.

When you feel alone and afraid.

OP, that is exactly it

it's socially acceptable becuse it's seen as discipline .

adults are meant to discipline children, aren't they? because all adults are better/more educated/reasonable aren't they? - apart from the ones who can only make themselves heard through a fist/slap...

Is it not also that adults are expected to be able to comprehend complex reasoning and communicate properly whereas children are not always able to do that?

My mother occasionally slapped if I did something dangerous (running accross the road / touching the cooker) because it was an immediate shock to get my attention and convey I shouldn't be doing that when there wasn't time for long explanations.

Onehandflapping's theory is also excellent I think.

I think that as a parent our job is to teach, to punish, to encourage, to restrict, to control. We may disagree over to what extent and in which circumstance but that is our job. We spend our time from the moment they are born shaping their behaviour, controlling them within their environment and we find the ways to do that which vest suit our child rearing philosophy.

So an adult slapping a child has stepped from an acceptable method of control and punishment into an unacceptable one. they are forced to find a means to manage their child and slip from an ok way of achieving this into one which is not ok. But the situation has arisen from their position of responsibility and accountability for the behaviour of their child.

No such relationship exists, or should exist with another adult. You can walk away. You have no duty or responsibility which drives you to try and manage the situation. You are there, furious, entirely through choice.

There was a thread on here which I just lurked on, a few weeks ago. The poster admitted to hitting her toddler in anger and frustration. She was full of remorse and received lots of sympathy.

Yet I know what the reaction would be if someone posted that they had hit their partner and were full of remorse.

I don't understand the huge change in response for two very similar incidents but one concerning a child and one concerning an adult.

That's a good explanation Pagwatch.

Yet would you not say that a marriage is a duty and responsibility too? You are driven to sharing and co-habiting with someone. The both of you shape your relationship. Walking away is often not an option that is considered.

You do understand. People here have articulated about it very well.

What advice would you have offered the woman who smacked her toddler?

I think there is no right answer to this.
We all abuse the people in our lives at some point, and they abuse us, but its the extent to which it happens, how often, and how it makes the people feel that defines an abusive relationship

pictish, if I understood then why would I start a thread?

I don't understand. No.
Even my own mind tells me that smacking a toddler in anger is not as bad as smacking an adult, but I can't tell you why that is. I know it shouldn't be and I can only think that's because smacking children was seen as socially acceptable until a few years ago. No-one talks about it in terms of aggressive violence and there is a lot of sympathy for parents who reach the end of their tether. Does that mean however that it is right?

I didn't respond and I generally don't respond to threads about smacking children.

Dinah - how often? Good point. But does that make a one-off slap acceptable? It would seem to be acceptable in the case of a child but not of an adult.

Pagwatch has explained extremely well why it is. Are you saying you disagree with this explanation?

I think slapping a child is abusive.

Something I read recently put it quite clearly:

?When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.
When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.
When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.
When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.?

Hitting anyone is wrong.

I think slapping a child, whilst wrong, is sometimes borne out of a lack of reasoning with said child and therefore slapping a hand going into a fire is okay. An adult is perfectly reasonable and the power should be level, when one adult slaps another there is a power shift.

an adult hitting a child isnt ALWAYS discipline, but it can be used as discipline.
There are different kinds of hits.

A husband doesnt batter his wife by smacking her hand away from the oven

Hitting anyone is violent and just wrong and must be seen as such. What is spectacularly wrong about hitting children (who, on the whole, are smaller and weaker than us) are the justifications people invent for violence against minors.
Read below and substitute child for woman and it will be recognized that well into the 1970s and 1980s this was believed (have these beliefs ever gone away?).
How long will it take us to apply the same thinking to hitting our children?
I write with no apology. In fact, I will shout it:
HITTING CHILDREN IS VIOLENT AND WRONG.
It is just that women have begun to speak up and (sometimes) have somewhere else to go. Children have no voice and nowhere_ else to go.
Please read below and read 'For Your Own Good' by Alice Miller
'Wife beating was common and the logic of Tudor England was that the wife would have provoked her husband into beating her and if she had behaved properly, he would not have beaten her. Therefore she herself was responsible for her beating! In theory, a wife could walk away from a marriage ? but to what? Who would keep her? Who would employ her? Therefore, women had to stay in a marriage even if it was a brutal one as there was very little else she could do.'
From:
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/women_in_tudor_england.htm

I think it is all to do with getting the point across and how that's possible.

You can talk with an adult, and listen. You can reason and you can articulate and be heard and hopefully understood.

Only when someone is deemed incapable of responding positively to reason is it considered alright to use force, ie in a criminal situation with someone being restrained or even shot at.

Paggy is spot on that marriage and relationships are something it's possible to walk away from when the other person is being unreasonale. As parents we do not have that option, or no one would care for our child.

Children cannot understand reason or cannot respond to it always in a safe, non harmful and appropriate way. If the use of physical force is employed then that should be minimal, absolutely, but at times it is something that may be required I think.

It would also be abusoive for a man to put his wife on the naughty step. We dont parent our partners. Its a completely different relationship, and the non smacking, whilst applaudable in theory, is a very very recent thing, and not how any culture anywherer else ever in history has really ever done it. Its a new thing, so its a bit unreasonable to talk about it as though its the only way of bringing up a child.
many people who use physical discipline are also abusers, but many people are not, therefore id say that its not the actual smack thats abuse, but many other things combined with the smacking.
You cant reasonably bring about a brand new pretty much untested theory of childrearing and then criminilise the people who do it the way its always been done