Deborah Coddington: Memories hit home in child smacking debate

Smacking and boozing are great New Zealand traditions. Indeed, they're so integral to our national identity that any attempts to change legislation around their practice provokes more debate than, oh, minor issues like whether SOEs should use taxpayers' money to expand their core business, or forcing pre-schoolers to have identification numbers.

The latter may increase political interference in private life, but what matters more is nanny state's destruction of parenting rights and family values. When I was a kid, raised in rural New Zealand in the 1950s, parents knew best and if that meant a little hardship in the form of caned backsides, well, it was good for us.

Like many of those opposing Sue Bradford's bill to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act, I was whacked as a child by my parents. Submitters against the bill say it never did me any harm - I should be grateful the only physical contact I had with my father was violent.

I knew he loved me, and it was only for major crimes, mind. Like when I was a pre-schooler and hated porridge. Forced to sit at the table until I'd eaten it, I discovered I could up-end my plate down the back of the ping-pong table leaning against the dining room wall. When the family decided on a game one night after I'd gone to sleep, and pulled out the table only to find my stale mess, I was hauled from my bed and belted repeatedly on my bare 4-year-old bottom by my over-six-foot father. That'll teach me to eat, he yelled.

I'm told this is "reasonable force", the same as "time out", except better because it's over quickly. I remember the hurt - not just physical - every time I eat porridge.

When a girlfriend and I were out riding our horses too late, her father took her down the hall and used a riding crop to teach her to be home on time. At primary school the next day we gasped at the weals and lines of bruising across her buttocks and thighs. Bet she was never late home again.

And look what happened when we banned corporal punishment in schools - children are uncontrollable now. If only teachers could strap them like in my day. We knew how to behave. "Six of the best" was my weekly ration from male teachers when I'd committed sins like forgetting to bring my sewing or my togs, couldn't spell parallel, or covered my exercise books with floral wallpaper instead of brown paper as instructed. These lapses were clearly a threat to my intellectual development.

Anyway, school days aren't meant to be enjoyable - you're there to learn respect; fear, if necessary.

And you never answered back or allowed emotions to show. Especially at home, or it was "wipe that look off your face!" While you puzzled as to which "look" was on your face, you got a clip around the ear that made your head ring.

Today's Christian and parenting lobby groups say they smack their children in love. Exactly. We forget that wives were once given a loving smack when they failed to live up to the expectations of their adoring husbands. Like when they didn't have a hot dinner waiting on the table when the man of the house reeled home from the pub, red-eyed, stinking and vicious. She had to watch herself later when it was bedtime - best pour more whiskey so he flaked before lights-out.

And so what if we kids had to sit in the car for hours outside the local pub while Dad was drinking with his mates? It didn't kill us. We knew he'd stagger out eventually, lurch behind the wheel, drive home with no headlights, insisting whoever painted those white lines was drunk.

Marriage was a respected institution in those days. You didn't get wives taking off with half a joker's hard-earned cash and assets, then running to the Family Court to pinch the kids as well. Women knew they should stand by their men. It wasn't dishonest to tell the neighbours you got your black eye from falling off your horse; it was called spousal loyalty. Good family values.

Anyway, sex was not something women were supposed to enjoy. And there was none of today's liberal attitude to sex education.

Far better for children to be ignorant; find out through games of postman's knock while their parents got tiddly at PTA meetings, or when the grocery delivery man invited them into the back of his van for a lolly.

But kids today? They should be barred from drinking until they're at least 20. They've got no respect for authority, are allowed to do whatever they like and have never had a bloody good hiding.

They go through relationships like boy racers through roadblocks.

Back in the good old days governments stuck to tar-sealing roads and handing out import licences, not telling parents with a skinful of booze they can't raise a stick to their kids. A smack around the head or backside when we misbehaved did us a power of good. So much good, in fact, we've never forgotten a single hiding, nor the ensuing pain, resentment and hatred.