Where are we at with the smack?

The other day I smacked my youngest daughter, Grace. She was wearing a nappy but it still shook her up – and me too. It’s not the first time I’ve smacked Grace but it’s probably the first time I have done so with a fervour that caught both of us by surprise.

I feel guilty of course. What does it say about me when I resort to smacking a three-year-old girl – a quarter of my size − to impose my will upon her? And then, I wonder if I have broken the law? Will the Department of Human Services come knocking at my door and seize my children? Where are we at with the smack?

I was bought up in an era where physical punishment was handed out on a fairly regular basis - particularly at school. We had one Christian brother who whacked us on the backside with a fence paling. It looked funny enough if you were a spectator but if you were copping it, it was excruciating.

Another teacher actually took up a run up when wielding his strap – I kid you not. He referred to his strap as his “pet”. It was made of a special vinyl, rubber compound and was the kind of strap the guy in the strap shop would’ve sold with a nod and a wink: “Top of the range Sir. You know your stuff”.  The teacher who owned that strap was the scariest teacher I ever knew. A real Jekyll and Hyde. He rarely wielded his pet, but when he did, everyone in class got an insight into the darker side of humanity. I never messed up in that teacher’s class after watching him dish out a couple of whacks to the toughest guys in class. They were sobbing.

Dad rarely hit us – he would yell at us sometimes like a drill sergeant, which was generally enough to bring us into line, but if he did happen to clout you, you knew about it. It didn’t just hurt physically; it hurt emotionally. It bruised your soul for days, weeks, maybe years. It was like a thunderbolt of disapproval. I’m over it now … honest.

Mum broke a wooden spoon on my elbow one Sunday morning after mass. I took a magnet to church and scratched my name into the pew. I was scratching away at the very time the priest was extolling the virtues of the new furniture the church had somehow managed to buy after countless fetes and raffles. Mum was horrified. After my beating at home (come on Mum, if you break a spoon on someone it’s a beating) she rushed back to church with a bottle of Marveer to try and save the family name. I don’t know how old I was, but I could write well enough for anyone to make out that it was an Atherton who had defiled God’s new furniture.

In turn, Mum recalls being whacked across the knuckles with the back of a bread knife if she dared stretch across the dinner table. It seems each generation has been dealing with the smack or the wack, or the clip or the clout, or the belt and the boot, in varying degrees since Cain and Abel were youngsters.

And the further you go back – generally speaking − the worse it seems to have been. Today, what was once considered acceptable discipline has been reclassified in some instances as child abuse or assault. Overseas, the smack is outlawed in more than a dozen countries. What will happen if the smack gets the sack downunder?

Will parents find themselves in court on smack-related charges that have nothing to do with drugs. In 2020, will kids find themselves on the end of a severe hair ruffling if they misbehave? Or will anti-smack legislation lead to a “smacklash” with desperate parents wilfully smacking their children in front of police, openly flouting the law in much the same way as the freedom riders of the 1960s.

OK, I’m being particularly silly now but the days of the smack are definitely numbered. Which leaves us with very few effective options – except perhaps for “time out”? I love time out. For those of you who don’t know about it, time-out consists of isolating a child for a period of time when she or he misbehaves.

Of course, it’s only a matter of time until someone twigs that this is also a mental abuse technique based on solitary confinement principles perfected at Port Arthur Prison in Tasmania in the 19th Century … so I wouldn’t get too familiar with it. Remember, you read it first here: Time Out may be on borrowed time too.

by Bruce Atherton
 

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, May 2008.