You might wonder why the fact that Tony Blair smacked his three older children when they were small but does not hit his five-year old son, Leo, should be front page news here. It seems to be an extraordinary item to feature so prominently in an Indian newspaper, yet it did quite recently, complete with a photograph of the Blair family!
In all fairness, the item was reproduced from The Times, London, where the subject of whether smacking children is acceptable or not continues to be hotly discussed. Debates on the Children Act, which bans any physical punishment by parents in England and Wales that leaves a mark on the youngster, have been continuing. Several years ago, there was an equally heated discussion on whether child minders should be allowed by parents to smack their charges, which ended with the court decreeing that, provided child minders had the parents’ consent, they could indeed be allowed to smack the children in their care.
It might seem extraordinary that such a subject should be considered by the courts and Parliament. This continuing discussion takes me back to the time when, as young mothers, we would debate endlessly the knotty question of whether children should be spanked at all. I, for one, was paranoid about a finger being raised on a small child. I would hold forth on the damage that physical punishment could wreak, on the disastrous consequences of disciplining through the mechanism of fear, of the humiliation such punishment inflicted on a child and so on.
It was grossly unfair, I would maintain staunchly, for a bigger person to hit a smaller one. An adult who smacked a child might think that she is powerful and in control, but it leaves her feeling small and ashamed. Such a smack is an admission of failure and an ineffective tool of discipline, I would insist. You didn’t hit your kid because it was good for him but because you ran out of patience and out of time to come up with a more constructive solution. Indeed, with the extreme reactions of youth, I was prepared to equate a smack with child abuse!
Today I am more moved by parent abuse! When I walk into a young household and see child one having fun squashing his lunch underfoot, while child two throws a screaming tantrum and child three adds to the general bedlam by bringing down the roof from his crib, I wonder why the mother, clearly at the end of her tether, doesn’t put a stop to it all with a smart slap or two. After all, a spontaneous smack is designed less to inflict pain than to convey a signal that enough is enough. Or is it? Can one be sure, I wonder, that the intention is not to inflict pain?
