The Pros And Cons Of Smacking Children

There is an ongoing debate about whether it is correct for parents to smack their children. Currently in Britain parents are permitted ‘reasonable chastisement’ as long as it does not leave a mark on the child. Many groups are campaigning to ban any form of hitting a child and in several countries this is already illegal. Conversely there are groups campaigning to prevent a ban. Both sides have many arguments with some more valid than others.
Smacking children may enable them to be more successful later in life. In a study quoted in The Telegraph (2017) it was found that teenagers’ who had been smacked, up until the age of six, were likely to be more optimistic and more likely to want to pursue higher education than those who had not been smacked

They insist that smacking is just another name for assault and that children should have a right to legal protection from assault as much as adults. This is particularly true when, in many cases, what starts off as a smack escalates into physical abuse. The fine line between the two is easily crossed by an angry adult. The United Nations has stated that, “Corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading forms of punishment are forms of violence” (Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2006). In the same way an adult would not generally hit another adult, even if upset by them, a child should receive equal treatment. Which adult, if asked to honestly evaluate, could truthfully say they had smacked purely for discipline and not to express their own anger and release frustration?
There is an argument for the use of smacking as a punishment in extreme and dangerous circumstances to prevent a child repeating the behaviour. Many parents would consider smacking a child if they ran into a road or touched something hot. The parent feels that the shock and pain the child will experience will imprint the memory onto their brain and remind them to act differently in future situations. In an otherwise loving environment this could possibly not harm a child and may even achieve the intended

Children who see violence being used against them will go on to use violence with others. When a child is hit by someone they love, who they expect to care for them and protect them, it can confuse them immensely. Constant exposure to this confusion can cause them to start expecting hostility from everyone around them and leads to a rise in anti-social behaviour. This is known as ‘hostile attribution bias’. When interviewing parents it was found that aggression in children was the most likely behaviour to lead to smacking. There was a clear link found between an increase in smacking and an increase in aggression. Some have claimed that this is because children with worse behaviour tend to be smacked more often but this was not found to be the