Breaking the mould - a personal reflection on corporal punishment

Originally posted at Coppola Comment on 30/01/12.


This post is prompted by David Lammy's call for parents to be allowed to smack children, but it isn't in any way intended as an argument for or against physical discipline. Instead I have chosen to reflect on my own experience of corporal punishment as a child, and my quest as a parent to find a better way - to break the mould.

Both my parents used smacking routinely as their primary method of discipline. I know from comments made by my mother that I was first smacked when I was well under a year old, and by the time I remember being smacked, probably at about two or three, she had already moved on to using a slipper. The same was true for my three brothers. My father also smacked us, but at that age only with his hand. I would say that by the time we went to school all four of us were being smacked probably several times a day.  I now know such extensive use of physical chastisement was unusual in the 1960s, but it was by no means unique and no-one at the time would have thought it unreasonable. And I know that some families today still act this way: recently I watched an episode of Supernanny US in which undoubtedly well-intentioned (and desperate) parents used constant smacking with hands and wooden spoons to discipline three- and five-year-olds.

The effect on us was perhaps not quite what my parents intended. We were not well-behaved children. We fought constantly: my eldest brother and I beat up our younger brothers and were in turn beaten for it.  We also bullied other children, repeating with them what we were receiving at home and then being beaten for that as well. Photographs at the time show four scared and angry children: we smile, but the smile is tense and doesn't reach the eyes. My parents never made any connection between our violent and disruptive behaviour and the way in which they disciplined us: to them, we deserved the punishment we received and they did it with the best intentions.

The primary school that my eldest brother and I went to used corporal punishment. The head of the infants school used to smack us round the legs or on the hand with a ruler as an informal punishment. Formal punishment for boys was the cane and for girls the slipper, and only with parental permission. In practice hardly anyone was ever caned or slippered, and anyone who was instantly became something of a hero. My brother's street cred went up hugely when he was caned at the age of seven after the school had exhausted all other means of controlling his behaviour. I can't help thinking that this entirely defeated the purpose of the punishment, and it certainly had no effect on my brother's behaviour. He carried on behaving as badly as before.  But the caning meant little to him anyway. He was already getting more severe punishment at home.

You see, when we became too big (or too hardened) for a smack on the bottom to bother us much, our parents moved on to using weapons. I've already mentioned that my mother used a slipper on us. By the time we were six, my father had taken to using sticks, and from that time on increasingly my mother handed over responsibility for punishment to him. If we misbehaved during the day we would receive a beating when he got home from work.  And the crimes for which we received beatings became more and more trivial: I remember being beaten with a cricket stump at the age of 12 because I had taken strawberries from the garden.

Whether or not this was an effective way to discipline children is a matter of debate. My parents were convinced they were doing the right thing. But I believe it did not work. My eldest brother and I remained disruptive bullies for most of our school careers, and consequently continued to receive frequent and severe physical punishment well into our teens. My middle brother became ever more withdrawn, which deflected much of the punishment towards his more overt elder siblings. And my youngest brother became ill, thus more-or-less avoiding punishment completely. This did not go down well with his eldest brother, who tormented him.  We were dysfunctional children, and we became dysfunctional adults. My working life was dogged by difficulties with interpersonal relationships and problems controlling my temper. For a long time I thought this was just me, because throughout my life I had been frequently told that I couldn't get on with people - until one day my youngest brother commented that his problem was that he didn't know how to behave. At that point the penny dropped, and I started to see that the punishment that we had received as children had deterred us through fear, but taught us nothing. Like my brother, I had no idea how to behave.

Punishment alone does not teach children the right way to behave: for that, teaching and modelling of good behaviour is needed. Punishing children without explaining what they have done wrong and how they should have behaved instead is pointless, yet that happened all too frequently: I can still remember occasions where to this day I do not know what I did wrong.  Punishing children for crimes that you have not taught them about beforehand simply makes them angry. Punishing children for making honest mistakes makes it impossible for them to learn. But these principles apply WHATEVER form of punishment is used - they are not limited to physical chastisement.

The problem with my parents' discipline was not so much the violence as the inconsistency (my brothers could get away with things that I could not), the mixed messages (being punished for copying parents' behaviour) and the lack of good teaching and modelling. And above all, the injustice. Most people I know who were beaten as kids are philosophical about the occasions when they consider it was a "fair cop". What rankles is the occasions when they were punished unreasonably, whether because they didn't actually commit the crime, they didn't know it was a crime or the punishment was out of proportion.  For me, being punished for things my brothers had done on the grounds that I should have stopped them was the greatest injustice. I am only 14 months older than my eldest brother. How on earth was I supposed to stop him? And if I had succeeded, I would then have got into trouble for bullying. It was impossible to win.

The big problem with such dysfunctional families is that the pattern repeats. Most of us model our parenting on our own childhoods, because it is what we know. However unpleasant it was, and however angry we feel about it, it is familiar. When we are desperately trying to manage two toddlers throwing simultaneous tantrums in the supermarket, it is all too easy to do what our parents did, because we don't have to think about it. Finding another way takes imagination, information and emotional control - all of which are in short supply when a parent is stressed. And when we are angry, hitting makes us feel better, even if it doesn't solve anything. So when I realised that the problem was that I had never learned how to behave, I understood why my parents behaved as they did. They were repeating (more mildly, actually, in the case of my father) what they had received from their parents. They had never learned how to behave, either.

When my son was born, I decided that I did not wish to repeat that pattern again. I did not want to be a heavy-handed parent. I wanted my children to love and trust me, not be scared of me. But I did not know any other way. I had to learn how to be a parent "from scratch".

Fortunately I had help. I went spectacularly to pieces after my son was born and ended up spending eight years in therapy, during which time I did a significant amount of reparenting work. From that I learned what a "better way" might look like, and I have tried to the best of my ability to put it into practice. My children have not experienced anything like the level of physical violence that I did. I did smack both my children when they were small, though never with anything other than my open hand. But looking back now, even that was too much for someone whose background contained so much violence, and I should have found other ways. The pull to escalate smacking into something much nastier was very strong and I don't doubt my children were aware of it, even though I never acted on that impulse. I still remember the first time I smacked my son, and I realise now that it fundamentally changed my relationship with him: after that, the unconditional trust was gone, and he was always a little bit wary. Mummy could hurt him....And smacking my daughter made her angry and rebellious: the close relationship that we had previously had changed to something slightly more distant and strained. I bitterly regret this. If I could turn back time, replace those smacks with other forms of discipline, I would do so.

I don't believe that anyone who has experienced serious violence in their childhood should smack their children. They are like reformed alcoholics - one drink is too many. Other people, whose childhoods were more balanced, perhaps could safely use occasional smacking within the general context of a loving, consistent and above all educational approach to discipline. But is it really necessary? David Lammy clearly thinks it is, and I know many people agree with him. I don't know, and I am not a safe judge. All I know is that to this day I feel sick when I see and hear children being smacked and I would rather no child ever experienced that pain.

There is a happy ending to this story, though. My parents may have struggled as parents, but they are wonderful grandparents and my children love them dearly. And as my children grow into adults, I see them able to manage their emotions and deal with people far, far better than I ever could. They squabble from time to time, as siblings do, but they care deeply about each other. And they have good, solid friendships with people their own age. So maybe I have done enough. Maybe, despite the mistakes I have undoubtedly made in my parenting, I have succeeded in breaking the mould.