I am in France, where hitting kids has become illegal only in 2019. There is a practice we call fessee which consists of slapping the butt of your kid, which sort of hurts but fades quickly. It’s been around forever here and when I was a kid in the 80s was the ultimate threat (our fathers got the “martinet” which is small whip).

Anyways, although illegal, hurting your kid is a very common practice around here.

On that subject: humiliation in school by teachers has been prohibited since 1953, and is still common here too. In the first school my kid went to, there was a board on the wall in the hallway where they would write the name of bad boys to public-shame them.

In the US it's called spanking, and would be carried out manually, via a belt (using the buckle if you're a true sociopath), a "switch" - a small, whiplike sapling or tree branch, or a paddle which looks like a small cricket bat.

When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.

That said, this entire thread is a shitshow and further convinces me that no one has any idea what they're doing or probably even any coherent idea of why they're raising children in the first place or what they want for those children, and reinforces my decision to opt-out of the whole idea.

Also, car battery jumper cables are a timeless favorite for this purpose.

> When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.

In the US? Of course not. Still allowed and in fact being done: https://theconversation.com/video-shows-students-still-get-p...

So you are opting out because you perceive others as doing something wrong. Ok.

Having a child necessitates raising the child. Rather simple.

Beatings. I'm in my 30s and I was beat as a kid. You'd be surprised how legal and still often recommended it is, especially with neurodivergent young boys.

One of the founders of the DevOps movement once gave a talk on Dallas where he described striking a young boy who had hit his daughter because he thought especially young white boys need to learn consequences.

Especially in neurodivergent young boys, for sure. Speaking from experience.

Getting hit as a kid didn't teach me anything positive.

If hitting kids did anything positive, we'd be living in the worst not the best time to be alive.

What?

>> smack our kid into submission > What does this mean?

It only has one possible meaning: beat your child until they comply. A large percentage of parents have no other response. If they don't use physical violence they may use verbal or psychological violence instead.

People have a biological urge to reproduce which they're happy to indulge but are often unprepared for the challenges of raising children. Exasperation and exhaustion make shouting at or striking your child an attractive strategy. Note that this is different to (effective) discipline in that these responses are often arbitrary and unpredictable, leading to anxious and depressed children.

> often unprepared for the challenges of raising children

I don't think there's any way to really understand what raising a child entails until you've done it.

I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting". The intent was "ignore what the kid is requesting, and communicate to them 'no you don't want that, it is wrong to want that'". One way to do that would of course be to "hit", but the idea is about insisting that 'your view is right', and ignoring/not acknowledging the need the child is trying to communicate. My point being, this can do almost as much damage, even if you are not 'hitting'. Source: Am parent, was child.

It is hard living some problem, and then experiencing that the people who are in charge of taking care of you, consistently communicate "No, there is just something wrong with you, you don't want that/that isn't really a problem".

> I don't think this was intended as "physically hitting".

I am very sure it was. In many parts of the world (including the USA) that is still completely accepted and normal.

FYI “smack” is British English for American English “spank” and they are just about synonymous, modulo cultural differences on what kind of smacking/spanking is acceptable.