I’VE read a fair bit lately around the smacking issue lately and just like yesterday’s opinion piece by Vonny Leclerc (It’s never OK to hit a child, The National, October 23), it’s so one-sided. 

Vonny makes the linkage between smacking and violence time after time, and her experience may well have been violent. But that is not smacking. It sounds very much like bad parenting.

I am a father of three, and one thing you never do is smack while in a temper or while angry at a child. Vonny also fails to realise her actions as a child are not dealt with as if she was an adult. What does she think would happen if she sank her teeth into someone’s face on a night out as an adult? 

Perhaps if we think about our obligation to keep the law of the land, it does not reside in our ability to understand it, much less our willingness to agree with it. Civil society rests on the fact of obedience to lawfully constituted authority, not on consensus.

We obey the law because it is the law. We have every right to disagree with a law, argue against it and seek to change it, but as long as it is the law – good, bad or indifferent – we must obey it, whether we like it or not, or take the consequences. 

Our relationship to the state is analogous of the relationship between children and their parents. Parental responsibility gives parents legitimate authority. Parental authority, administered with parental love, is to be responded to by a child with deference and obedience. 

It is unfair to burden a child – especially a small one – with the need to understand the often complex concepts behind parental decisions, whether prohibitions or requirements.

In a relationship built on trust, it is enough that a child does what its parents require. That does not, of course, preclude the advisability of explanation, but compliance does not rest on understanding and consent. It rests on legitimate parental authority. 

It is good training for adulthood for children to learn in the loving environment of the family to respect authority for what it is, or take the consequences.

Every situation is different, every child is different. What works with one will probably not work with another. If as a father I hit or abuse a child so hard it leaves a mark, bruise etc, then I can currently be charged – and rightly so.

There are many parents who no doubt use smacking as an “easy” option – I’ve seen it often in shops. The loud parent screaming at the child, then whacking them with no warning. That’s not good parenting. Calm discussion, backed up with what is a last resort and a rarely used smack, is an option that needs to remain. 

Should it become law, what’s next? Will we become criminals when we use emotional threats against a child (emotional abuse against adults is now a law)! Will the naughty corner be outlawed? 

Are those parents who continually shout at their child not doing more harm than a rare smack? Personally I can’t remember the last time I smacked, say, our eldest (who is still a child but grown-up enough where its use would be pointless), and the number of times the punishment was used during the previous years I’d easily be able to count on one hand.

But it’s still an option. If the state really wanted to help, then why not look at parenting classes led by experienced parents? This would be much more beneficial than criminalising loving parents. 

Parenting is super hard at times, and let’s be clear any abuse of a child is wrong! But linking abuse and a smack on the hand of a child where they may be about to cause themselves more harm is equally if not more harmful to the child in the long term.

Kenneth Sutherland
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