As British MPs debate moves to ban the smacking of children, Marie Murray argues we should follow suit - smacking is violence
Can you imagine arriving in a land where the occupants spoke a language you did not understand, were physically much larger than you, had vastly superior physical and intellectual strength and controlled your access to all necessities of living?
Can you imagine existing in this place, attempting to learn the complex communication code, the intricacies of the language and the correct responses to their confusing, often contradictory requests on "pain" of physical punishment for failure?
How would it feel not to know whether or when a rule had been transgressed other than by the ache of a large hand on your small limbs or the irate startling shout from an occupant?
In what way would you reconcile the fact that these occupants were allowed to hit you for any sign of anger or aggression you portrayed when you attempted to copy their modus operandi on others; particularly if those others were even more recently arrived, smaller versions of yourself?
And what sense would you make of the admonition "Don't hit him, he's smaller than you" as the large looming figure towering above hits you?
The intentional infliction of pain on another is an outrage, and we are rightly appalled by it when it is inflicted upon adults. Yet physical assault of the child is legally allowed provided it be perpetrated by parents in the interests of "reasonable chastisement" of the child for the purpose . . . of what? For the social development of the child?
How can a model of achieving compliance by coercion augment social interaction? For the educational expansion of the child? How can a model of force be of educative enhancement? For the child's spiritual enrichment? Hasn't enough violence been perpetrated in the name of righteousness?
Or perhaps "reasonable chastisement" has some value in the emotional development of the child? Yes, it does. It teaches children to flinch and to fear, to distrust, to be wary and to wait until they are old enough to have the power to wield against others when it is currently inflicted upon them.
It is difficult to shake off what has been historically legally entrenched and culturally condoned for centuries. The rights of masters to beat their slaves, of men to beat their wives, and of teachers to beat pupils in school, appeared to be perfectly reasonable until such practices were examined for the denial of human rights they constituted.
We do not always see the world in which we are embedded: what we know is what we know, and it is difficult to step outside that framework to envisage change so cataclysmic that it appears to deny parents their right to decide what their own child needs.
Besides, most parents will argue that their use of slapping is infrequent, appropriate and in the interests of protection - the sharp slap on the hand reaching for the broken glass, the live wire, the open fire or the traffic-ridden road.
It is difficult for parents who love, care for and have their children to be told that legal sanctions will prohibit them from deciding what discipline is allowed within the confines of their home with their own children.
It is difficult until we begin to examine the reality of slapping. Research shows that punishment is the first and most primitive form of learning, where what is wrong is decided on the basis of what is punished. Authoritarian parenting is also the most primitive form of parenting, characterised by punitiveness, power imbalances and absence of explanation or negotiation.
Bullying by children of other children is frequently traced to learned behaviour based on might-is-right, the child perpetrator a child victim in another context, and there are decades of research linking antisocial behaviour in children to harsh punishment by parents.
And, what is more significant is that the studies in 2002 (Gershoff) of "ordinary" smacking finally confirm that even ordinary smacking can tend to make children more aggressive.
Most tragically, perhaps, is the transgenerational nature of punishment, where those who were physically punished punish and see it as normal, acceptable and appropriate.
A legal ban on slapping does not serve to prosecute parents but to protect children, to create a milieu in which the physical assault on the child is of equal affront to us as a society as the physical assault on any other human being.
It is a complex issue that lies at the heart of every child's and adult's experience of childhood and family and therefore it evokes extreme actions and reactions in us. But like the abolition of slavery, the removal of the right of a man to beat his wife, the disallowance of bullying in the workplace, of abuse of workers and the recognition of the need for laws for racial protection, it is another step towards civilisation, not a retrograde move towards inappropriate liberalism, as many would claim. It is a long overdue step in respect for the child.
To those who say we will have a violent immoral society where what one can get away with will be the first operating principle, we may answer simply: what do we have now?
• Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview