KEY POINTS:
Smacking as a disciplinary tool has never worked for me. I only smacked my daughter once.
She would have been almost 2 and we were running late to catch a plane.
I was racing around the house trying to get our things together and she was trying to
get my attention. Eventually she called out to me and, holding my gaze, tore a photo straight down the middle.
The photo was one of the precious things I thought I'd put above the 2-year-old tide mark, but she'd got a chair, climbed up, and grabbed something she knew would get the attention of a busy, distracted mother.
In frustration and fury, I slapped her hand so hard my fingers stung. Her eyes blazed, she stuck out her jaw, drew herself up to her full two-and-a-half feet, whacked me straight back and snapped: "Don't you DARE do that to me."
I didn't need a super nanny to tell me it was my fault the situation had deteriorated. I should have been more organised, I shouldn't have tried to rush her and clearly, for my daughter, smacking wouldn't work.
Over the years, I found negotiation and, in extreme cases, withdrawal of privileges worked as a way of moulding her behaviour. Which is not to say I didn't feel like smacking her a couple of times. Anyone who's been on the receiving end of a contemptuous sneer from a sullen teenager will know the tingling feeling you get in your hand when you long to wipe that look off their face - a funny phrase that has its echoes in my own past.
But you can't possibly hit a teenager. That's assault, pure and simple. And besides, going on strike, and refusing to act as chauffeur, cook, personal maid, personal banker, tutor, cleaner and the myriad other roles that make up a parent's job description, was more effective in bringing about an attitude adjustment. I only needed to resort to strike action once in all her teenage years.
And so we come to the smacking bill and I'm getting splinters in my bum from sitting on the fence on this one. I think it's a very blunt tool, a very primitive parenting tool and I don't really understand the arguments used by parents who choose to smack. Never hit your child in anger? Why on earth would you smack them when you were calm and clear headed? Surely you'd have the clarity to come up with a more effective method of discipline than smacking once the red mist of rage had cleared.
The idea that you can't argue with a child or that it's for their own good and how else are they going to learn, are the excuses men from less enlightened cultures give to justify beating women.
At the same time, there are plenty of parents who smack and who are good parents. The smacking isn't more than a momentary sting, it's done with the hand, and smacking stops at a certain age. These are parents who would never harm their children and they resent, understandably, the idea that the removal of Section 59 will make them criminals.
The real criminals, the woeful, abject failures of parents whose children end up broken and damaged at Starship, will keep on beating. Legislation won't change their behaviour but I guess Sue Bradford knows that. What she and her supporters want to do is say: "Violence against children, no matter how mild, will not be tolerated in this country." Which is admirable but parents who choose to smack will keep on smacking. Laws introduced that cannot be policed contribute to an attrition of respect for authority.
