Tapu Misa: Toughness can bring out the best in children and parents

We had been having a few disciplinary issues at our house and I was to blame, in the opinion of the younger members of the household. Apparently, I hadn't been hard enough. "You should be tougher on us," admonished the eldest, though she really meant I should be tougher on the younger two. Like Dad, she added, traitorously.

No problem, I said. What if I permanently deprived the teenager of her cellphone and the boys of their X-Box? What if I sold the TV? What if I just sent them off to boarding school?

"No!" cried the youngest, who'd declared he'd be living at home till he was 35. "You should just smack us."

Which was tempting, if only I hadn't already tried it and found it wanting as a method of correction. My daughter was 2 when I made her hold out her hand to be smacked for some now-forgotten misdemeanour.

When she stubbornly stuck out her chin, I smacked her a second time. After the third smack, and an even more defiant refusal to back down, I realised she'd won. I'd have to really hurt her to make my point.

From then on, parenting became a battle of wits. My children knew, for example, that I'd never hit them hard enough to inflict any pain. A smack could only have been symbolic, less painful than being grounded, less wearying than one of my interminably long lectures.

So I am not at all surprised to see that New Zealand research finds that children who've been at the receiving end of an occasional light smack do much the same in life as those who've never been smacked.

Psychologist Jane Millichamp, a lead author of the study, told the Weekend Herald that children who were merely smacked, rather than hit with an object like a strap or wooden spoon, or subjected to "extreme physical punishment", had "similar or even slightly better outcomes" than those who were not smacked - in terms of aggression, substance abuse, adult convictions and achievement.

"Study members in the 'smacking only' category of punishment appeared to be particularly high-functioning and achieving members of society."

Well, of course. It is logical to assume that children who'd been smacked only lightly would have had parents who'd have provided the kind of loving home environments where the majority of children would thrive. It would take more than an occasional smack to undo all that.

The truth is that parenting would be far too hazardous an undertaking if parents couldn't err occasionally without scarring their children for life. Children are a resilient lot, who tend to forgive the occasional parental foul-up, even really big ones, as long as they're loved and well fed.

In Ta'afuli Andrew Fiu's book Purple Heart, the author describes a harrowing scene in which his father beats his wayward younger brother, V, to within an inch of his life.

V had been getting into strife, fighting with the neighbourhood kids, then being escorted home in a police car. After the fourth such episode, his father warned him: One more time, and he'd "keel him".

The next day, after a policeman brought him home, his father carried out his threat. He was dragged into the sitting room, whipped with a belt, then the cord of an iron, then beaten with a frying pan.

"V was convulsing and shaking like an electrocuted rag doll. His legs were shaking as if he was having an epileptic fit, his eyes were rolling back in his head. My father bent over, picked up V and carried him to the garage". Six hours later, his mother cut him down from the garage rafters, where he'd been trussed like a pig, his hands tied to his ankles with a lavalava.

Years later, the family can joke about the beating. "Our family is a loving family, with parents absolutely devoted to their children. Today, my brother owns his own business and has a fine young family of two sons and two daughters."

Fiu's story has a happy ending, but it could easily have gone the other way. And who's to say V wouldn't have turned out well, given his loving family and devoted parents? The fact that V survived and went on to become successful doesn't mean the beating was good for him. It just means he survived it.

V's story would hearten those who believe the reason we have so many violent, undisciplined kids in our schools is that we have dispensed with corporal punishment. And this is true to an extent. My son says the kids who cause trouble at his school are those who get beaten at home, and for whom school discipline is meaningless.

Is the answer then to bring back corporal punishment - as some American public schools are doing - or is it to make it less acceptable for parents to beat their children?

As a former secondary school teacher from Christchurch told me: "The kids I had the most trouble with were the boys who were whacked and in some cases beaten fairly badly by their fathers or stepfathers.

"It was hard to get through to these boys as a teacher as they believed all women were weak and you had no authority over them at all. In the pre-caning-ban days I could send them to the dean to get whacked, which was counter-productive.

"It increased their class mana on their return and rubbed in the fact that as a female teacher I was not disciplining them myself. Some of the worse cases were so badly abused by their parents you thought twice before getting them into grief at school because you knew what they'd get at home and you knew it was all pointless."

What part does Green MP Sue Bradford's bill to abolish Section 59 of the Crimes Act play in this? I liken it to the legalisation of torture in the US. As one critic has said, there's a world of difference between resorting to acts of torture in desperate circumstances, and enshrining it in law.

Bradford's bill won't stop child abuse. It ought not to criminalise parents who want the best for their children. But it will raise the bar, so that children will become as protected as every man, woman and dog.