Smacking: It’s A Mug’s Game

Is hitting your toddler wrong? Even if you disagree with the idea I reckon pretty much every parent has come close to it. I’ve never actually done it myself. But I’ve sure come close. Nevertheless, the very idea makes me furious. I think it’s wrong. Ethically wrong. Actually, hitting anyone is wrong. But most of the time, if you hit an adult you run the risk of the adult hitting you back. Which is why I believe a lot of frustrated parents given to pugilism focus their attacks on their children – there’s less risk of retaliation.

I was at Coles a few days ago buying some Goji berries because I’m told they’re the best source of antioxidants that money can buy. And because I’m also told antioxidants are really REALLY good for kids. Goji berries are apparently even more full of nature’s goodness than the more fashionable blueberries. So I have decided to try and convince my six- and three-year-old that they’re brilliant. So far, of course, I’m the only one who has managed to suck them down without throwing up. Covering the gag reflex while the children watch very, very carefully, I say “umm yum”. No one – not my wife, not my kids – is convinced. Neither, it seems, is the scientific community who are still arguing about the whole antioxidant caper. So why do I bother? I don’t know. Like most parents, I’m pretty much in the dark. And amazingly contradictory.

But I digress. So. There I am at the Coles check out. Clutching my snake oil and a contradictory Cadbury Twirl. And behind me a 30-something woman is arguing with her four-something little boy. Who is clearly something of a little prick. He’s grabbing chocolates strategically positioned to be well within the grasp of a toddler by the supermarket management so that children and infantile adults (equally driven by compulsion) will pick them up. It’s your bog standard tantrum in the supermarket scenario. She’s getting increasingly irritated. He’s getting increasingly irritated. It’s all going downhill very fast.

Then suddenly, without warning, she hauls back and slaps him on the backside. It’s the shot that’s heard around the supermarket. Everything seems to freeze for a moment. We’re all stunned. And trying to find a happier place. The little boy is screaming even louder. Then I think I hear a man in the queue mutter “child abuse.” The enraged mother thinks she hears that too. So she turns on him. She doesn’t smack him but she does unleash a torrent of abuse.

Which got me thinking…and then it made me mad. Something about hitting a child is abhorrent. It offends our moral sense. We all felt it that day – particularly the child. The German philosopher, and proud parent, Friedrich Hegel once called spanking a “gangrene of the ethical order.” And it’s true! I don’t see spanking as discipline. I think it’s training. It’s like training a dog. Except most serious dog trainers these days wouldn’t even consider it.

Holding the line with your child is important. Discipline is important. But hitting your child is an ethical fail. Face it. You’ve lost it. You’re not showing the very self-control and discipline you’re supposed to be teaching your kid.

Even if it’s done in a cool, calculating and controlled manner it’s a fail. A double fail. Why? Because it’s an attack on the dignity of another human being. This is what hurts the kid most of all. It’s the loss of his or her precarious sense of autonomy – their emerging sense of dignity. Hitting, beating or the sweeter-sounding “spanking” treats another human being, not as a free (or potentially free) person but as a thing or some property.

If you wish to inspire in your child a sense of the value of other people how on earth can you do this through a direct attack on his or her dignity?

Spanking. It’s a mug’s game.