Corporal punishment: A British point of view

I have talked enough about the issue parents beating children from my point of view and it's time for me to get someone else's point of view. Blogging about being beaten as a child brings back painful memories, so I had to open up to some of my friends here in London and they have shared with me some perspectives about how they too experienced being beaten as children. That dispels the myth that it's primarily Asian parents who hit their children, British parents do hit their children too - unlike Sweden where smacking has been outlawed since 1979, in the UK mild smacking is still allowed, the term 'reasonable chastisement' has been used and it is defined as beating that does not cause "visible bruising, grazes, scratches, swellings or cuts". Meet my friend Tom who is 50, British and a father.

Limpeh: Hi Tom. So Tom, tell me please, were you smacked as a child, growing up in England?

Tom grew up in a small town in England

Tom: Yes my parents used to hit us, but my brother got it the worst. What I got, my brother got ten times worse. My mother could never get through to my brother, you know. He defied her, he ignored her, he provoked her and she was at her wits end with him. I think it started from an early age because she never really gained his respect or trust. It was stupid things from when we were really young. I remember once when I was about 11, she said, "if you do well in your exam I will buy you this football." So my brother studied hard and got great results and she simply pretended that she didn't make that promise. She then picked on something else that my brother didn't do well and broke that promise - like for crying out aloud, it's a few pounds to buy a football, it wasn't anything that was that expensive. I don't think she was lying - she plain forgot. But it was things like that which breaks a child's trust.

She was just a terribly disorganized person - she would miss appointments, like I remember the dentist calling up the house saying, "you were meant to come in today at 4 pm for an appointment, it's now 5:15 pm, we need to reschedule". It's things like that. She would forget birthdays, she would forget to return things she borrowed, we would be at the shops and she would realize that she forgot her purse, we would have the oddest things for dinner as she would forget to shop - literally, she once declared, "We all love deserts so much that I decided we'll have nothing but deserts for dinner tonight!" She would forget promises she made to us and I just got used to the fact that I could not take her word for it - but my brother took it very personally, he trusted my mother and she betrayed his trust. Children really value trust - so what kind of example are you setting for your children if you break promises all the time?

How is trust established and built?

Limpeh: How would your mother hit your brother Tom?

Tom: So when she told me brother to do something, he would not do it because I guess he didn't care what she thought, he didn't respect her or maybe he thought she would forget about it later. Of course, most of the time, she didn't and she thought he was just being disobedient or naughty. That would be when she started hitting him - I don't quite understand my brother's mindset, he knew that she would hit him with a belt if she was provoked and he still went ahead and provoked her time and time again. I was terrified of my mother when she got angry like that, there was nothing that could stop her. Mind you, she got hit by her mother when she was a child.

The biggest incident was when my mother found out that my brother had started smoking. This was when he was like 15 or so. She went apeshit crazy. Her own father had died of lung cancer as a result of smoking, so when she found out that my brother was smoking, man. I will never forget that day. She chased him around the house and she tried to beat him - but at that age, he was tall enough to outrun her. She wasn't going to talk to him about it, there was no sensible discussion about the impact on his health as a smoker - she was just out to hurt him, physically. It was like something in her mind just snapped and she went mad. I tried to stop her and she hit me instead. I remember seeing blood on the floor, I know it wasn't mine - it was my brother's so my mother must have hit him pretty bad.

My brother jumped out of the window and didn't come home that night. I had to call my father at work and when he returned, we went to the houses of my brother's friends from school to try to find him. We couldn't find him - I found out later that he had been hiding in the storeroom at one of his friend's house as he was genuinely scared. Later on that night, we got a phone call to pick him up and my father and I went - my mother stayed at home. I don't remember much, my father didn't say much to my brother apart from checking if he was alright.

Limpeh: So what happened next?

Tom: Well, what could my brother do? I was 13, he was 15 - he couldn't just run away from home. But it became the bone of contention between him and my mother. My mother would search his room for matches, lighters, cigarettes, any sign of tobacco and even if she couldn't find anything, she would be like, "are you smoking? Don't lie to me, are you smoking? I don't believe you, tell me are you smoking?" And even if my brother said, no I am not smoking, she would still interrogate him - he didn't trust her, she didn't believe a word he said - by that point, trust had broken down to the point where it was hard to repair. There was so much mutual suspicion, mistrust... I swear my mother got along much better with the neighbours than with my brother, you know. Their relationship was simply that bad.

Tom's mother didn't believe Tom's brother anymore. And vice versa.

And if my mother pushed my brother too far, he should declare, "yeah I smoke and I enjoy it, so what are you going to do about it?" She would then hit him and he would run away... It happened a lot. He would disappear for a few days, then it happened again and again and it really messed with his education. My brother is bright and really good with technology - he could've gone down the path that I did and became an engineer by going to university, but as he was so busy fighting with my mother all the time, his grades suffered as a result of her. He left home at 16 and moved away to live with an uncle as there was just no feasible way he could live under the same roof as my mother. They still have a very distant relationship, they barely speak and if not for me, I don't know if they will even be in touch now that my father has passed away. My brother would tell me things like, "yeah that's why mum hates me so much" and nothing I say can change his mind on that issue. He is convinced my mother totally hates him, even today. As for my mother, she has a selective memory, she chooses not to remember what happened in the past. She has mellowed a lot with age.

Limpeh: I am quite surprised at your story. You see, in Asian culture, it tends to be younger children who get hit the most because the parents deem that the child is too young to understand and respond to reason, so they use physical pain as a deterrent. But your mother seem to have intensified her beatings as your brother got older?

Tom: Yeah, it was the smoking thing. My mother was determined to stop my brother from smoking at all costs and she thought that perhaps beating him could force him to stop smoking - it was a desperate measure that reflected her feelings about the issue. She saw her father die of lung cancer, she didn't want to see her son die the same way. She tried everything to try to get my brother to stop smoking, including beating him. None of that worked and in hindsight, well - he was never going to listen to her. My father could have done so much more to be honest.

Limpeh: Did it work? Did your brother quit smoking?

Tom: No, my brother is still a heavy smoker today. I think he began experimenting like all teenagers do, but my mother certainly didn't help turn him away from smoking. I think she was trying to assert her control over him to show him, "you will do as you're told, even if I have to beat the life out of you in the process" and his response was, "I'd like to see you try." I think it's stupid because smoking is so damaging to his health, but my mother handled that poorly, very poorly. I don't want to say it's his fault or her fault - why play the blame game?

Limpeh: Let's talk more generally about spanking in England. Is it widely done?

Tom: Certainly back when I was a child, it was quite common for parents to smack their children. But it tended not to be done in school, it wasn't right for the teachers to do it, but it was considered okay for the parents to do it. I certainly don't see it as a East vs West, Asian vs white thing when it comes to smacking. Rather, it is a generation gap - the older generation certainly believe that naughty children deserve smacking. Back when my parents were at school, they used to get beaten quite brutally by the teachers then and that was what they grew up with. But in schools today, a teacher could lose his job if he lightly smacked a naughty child. Times have changed, it's a different world today.

Tom believes that attitudes have evolved with time on the issue of smacking.

Limpeh: You do know that in Sweden, all forms of smacking is illegal. It was outlawed in 1979.

Tom: Certainly, I think that Sweden is far more evolved in this process than the UK - they have completely outlawed all forms of smacking and I think the UK is headed that way in a few years. Perhaps in ten years.

Limpeh: So technically speaking, whilst younger parents in the UK are still allowed to hit their children without breaking the law, but how many parents actually still do that these days?

Tom: Very few. I think a key component of the paradigm shift in the UK as well as other countries is the number of children families have these days. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, people had more children and nowadays families tend to have only one child. The only child is so much more precious than if you are one of many - hence their whole approach to parenting is different. Parents are also a lot more informed these days - I doubt my mother actually read a single book on parenting, for her, the only reference point was her own experience as a daughter and my grandmother wasn't a particularly good role model either for my mother. Don't get me started on my grandmother...

Younger parents have a different approach to discipline these days.

Limpeh: What do you make of the case in Stockholm, where that Malaysian couple were jailed for child abuse?

Tom: Well laws differ from country to country. What is legal in Malaysia may be illegal in Sweden or the UK and vice versa - you have to be aware of the laws of the country you are living in as an expatriate. You don't get to break the laws just because you're a foreigner, there are no exceptions like that. I do wonder what will happen to them if they were in London instead of Stockholm, I wonder if the British authorities would gladly throw them in jail. I think they may get away with a far lighter sentence in the British courts even if they were found guilty of child abuse.

But really, I think there is a difference between a couple who are clearly abusing their children and someone like my mother who was clueless when it came to getting my brother to obey and tried everything she could in desperation. The latter is definitely my mother, but the result is the same at the end of the day, the children ended up getting hit a lot and that's wrong. I don't think my mother ever set out intending to abuse my brother, she just couldn't help herself. I'm not justifying her actions or defending her - I'm just saying that she is not completely evil. She wasn't a good mother to my brother but she isn't... evil or wicked. She was clueless, even stupid. There is a big difference, you see?

Limpeh: What do you think is better - a Swedish no-tolerance approach or a more Asian style "smack your kids if you want, it's up to you" approach? Which approach do you think works better in our modern world?

Stockholm, Sweden

Tom: Whatever approach you choose needs to put the children first and foremost, I say I would have to pick the approach which delivered the best results for the children. And if I had to pick one model over the other, I would pick Sweden's. There is a need to hold bad parents to account, there is a need to protect children should they be suffering at the hands of abusive parents. Furthermore, I think there is another practical aspect to it - you can legislate all you want but at the end of the day, you're talking about something that happens behind closed doors, in the privacy of homes, away from the public gaze.

Even in a place like Sweden, if parents smack their children at home, the only witness is the child - how are you going to practically persecute the parents? Unless there are some visible marks on the child's body as evidence of the beatings, then how are you going to build a case against the parent in court to lead to a successful persecution? Hence even in Sweden, you are going to have many challenges trying to mount a successful case. So you can legislate all you want, it can send a message to parents that they shouldn't beat their children, but for those who are determined to do so, they could still carry on in private, as I am sure it still does in Sweden even today regardless.

How is this law in Sweden going to be practically enforced?

Limpeh: In the case of the Malaysians, they pleaded not guilty and were adamant that what they did was not wrong and acceptable within their culture, that's why it was a slam-dunk de facto confession. But if you have a parent who doesn't want to go to jail and is good at covering up, then it can be very difficult to secure a successful conviction.

Tom: Right, so it's not so much what the law is, it's how it is being applied that actually impacts on the welfare of the children, which should be our key concern. And it takes more than just legislation to make real, positive changes on the issue - you need education. Parents need to be educated and they need support - there needs to be better checks in the system to ensure the kids are not being abused by their parents. Children need to be protected by the law.

Limpeh: Tom, you're a father, would you ever hit your children?

Tom: No. I choose not to. I must confess, there have been times when I have felt tempted, when I felt so angry that it would be my first instinct, but I know it is not the right thing to do. My wife agrees that we shouldn't - she was hit as well when she was young and at the end of the day, we want to do the right thing for our children and we have a range of punishments for them which are enforced should they misbehave. Children need rules and boundaries and parents need to ensure that they are enforced, but without the use of physical violence. But most of all, we work on the basis of trust and respect - I keep my promises, if I make my children a promise, I will honour it and they know I mean what I say. If anything, I suppose looking at my mother make all those mistakes made me determined never to make the same mistakes that she did. Certainly, I would be horrified if my children grew up to be a parent like my mother. No, no...

Limpeh: Tom, thank you so much for talking to me today.

Tom: Thanks, I am glad you're talking about this on your blog as it's a topic that many people find hard to talk about in their adulthood. It's the kind of thing they would rather forget and not deal with, but I think it is healthier to let it out in a safe environment where you have other kind, understanding adults to open up to.

Limpeh: Well Tom, that is what I hope I can offer my readers, through my blog and that is why I blog.