The story goes that the Pope had heard a father say he "sometimes had to smack [his] children a bit, but never in the face so as not to humiliate them". Reading that, my blood started to boil.
I can't sit here and write that I've never hit my kid. I have. But when I did it was always in anger, unthinking, and immediately regretted. It's the most UNdignified thing I've ever done - and I had at least three complete strangers stick their hands in my vagina when I was giving birth to that kid! Hitting kids is never dignified. It is humiliation.
It's here I turn to those who have helped me learn ways of dealing with my son's "challenging" behaviour without resorting to such methods. Rather than try to re-hash their words, I urge you to read these articles, to read the wealth of research that shows that not only does smacking not work, but that it leads to a whole host of problems further down the line:
Dr. Laura Markham of AHA Parenting - this link takes you to the page that answers the question 'Should I Spank My Child?' (clue: the answer is 'no') but also links you to pages upon on pages of information offering alternatives.
Attachment Parenting International - this page is all about 'Positive' discipline, which is one of the eight principles of 'Attachment' parenting. I try to follow these principles. It isn't always easy, particularly given it's not how either I or my husband were raised, but it works. The "traditional" methods might appear to but, speaking as a very damaged adult who was subjected to them, one who works with other very damaged adults, I can tell you the long-term effects aren't worth it.
Dr William Sears coined the term 'Attachment Parenting', which is based on a theory in developmental psychology which states that the emotional bonds a child forms with its caregivers have long-lasting effects. This link has many articles offering advice on how to deal with children's behaviour and parental anger.
I'll quite happily stand on my soapbox and shower my critics with studies that repeatedly show I, and every proponent of this type of parenting/ discipline is right. Or you can Google it for yourself if you're not a lazy fuckwit.
Many people who advocate for physical punishment as discipline like to quote the Bible - maybe that's why the Pontiff decided to. I hope not. People who use Bible quotes to back up this argument have completely misunderstood what they've read. Crystal Lutton has written an excellent article explaining why the passage they love to cite doesn't mean what they think it means. This is another good article, which reminds us that the English-language Bible has been translated from Hebrew and probably not very well....
The Pope has rightly faced much criticism for his comments. Much of it has come from Catholics - including the Vatican (2). I'll leave you with the words of Peter Saunders, taken from that article. He was abused by a Catholic priest as a teenager. They answer every possible argument for smacking:
"It might start as a light tap, but actually the whole idea about hitting children is about inflicting pain. That's what it's about and there is no place in this day and age for having physical punishment, for inflicting pain, in terms of how you discipline your children."Amen.
Footnotes:
(1) My feelings on abortion, for example, could form a post on their own. Although it's not something I think I could ever do unless my unborn child proved to be completely non-viable, I believe in bodily autonomy for women and that they are not mere vessels to carry and birth children. Yeah... I might do a post about this.
(2) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/vaticans-new-abuse-group-says-pope-francis-is-wrong-to-condone-smacking-10031356.html
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