From the archive: Should parents hit their children?

In the late 80s and 90s, there was much debate about smacking as a moral and ethical dilemma. In 1987, corporal punishment in schools became illegal and a campaign called End Physical Punishment of Children (EPOCH), of which I was a founding member, turned its attention towards eliminating physical punishment from other settings, including the home. It was in relation to this work that I was asked to address parental physical punishment in The Psychologist, in a May 1993 article.

Since that time, the nature of the debate has changed, but it has not been resolved. It has changed in that the issue is no longer only about parents' rights to hit and children's rights to be protected from violence, but is also increasingly about the damage which physical punishment can do to children, not only at the time but later in life. The debated damage is no longer entirely emotional but also cognitive.

There has been a spate of academic articles putting forward a relationship between physical punishment and various aspects of cognitive development. A very recent example by Jorge Cuartas and colleagues, published in Child Development in 2021, reports the results of longitudinal follow-up studies of 2–4-year-olds in four countries – Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Rwanda – as showing 'atypical brain function in children who were exposed to physical punishment – and spanking specifically – early in life as compared to children who were not exposed'. In all four countries, 2–4-year-olds who had been smacked in the week preceding the interview performed less well in a series of developmental tests. There is no information given about the nature or severity of what is described simply as 'spanking'.

This expanded indictment of physical punishment of children has not expanded public interest in the topic, which fills many academic papers but very few popular ones. Publication of the Children Act 2004 saw the right to smack children withdrawn from nurseries, daycare centres, and every care setting that was neither a school nor a home. It was not withdrawn from families. It was thought, and still is thought, to be a step too far to impose legal restrictions on how parents or their substitutes choose to treat their children.

There is still some pressure to change the law, but it remains unavailing. Last year, the government rejected renewed calls to ban physical punishment in the home, maintaining that existing legal protection, which bans anything but 'reasonable chastisement', provided sufficient protection. A physical punishment is thought to be reasonable, and would be so classified by the police if an incident was reported to them, if it does not leave any injury or mark on the skin which lasts more than a few minutes.

The governments of Scotland and Wales both appear to disagree that this is 'reasonable', with all physical punishment is banned in those countries. England and Northern Ireland remain determinedly against further legislation. However, everyday smacking and slapping seems much less common than it was 20 years ago, leading one to wonder if, in fact, many people assume that it is against the law.

As a campaigner for the abolition of physical punishment and of equal rights to protection from violence for children as is taken for granted by all adults in our society, I much regret this English intransigence. Reasonable chastisement is a concept which has its foundations in Victorian times and is no more useful now than it was then. There are now 65 countries in the world which have banned all physical punishment. I still hope that the day will come when the English government will join them.

Penelope Leach published a revised version of Your Baby & Child in 2022, and is currently working on a book on today's families. She received a CBE last year for her work on Education and Research.