The Damaged

I am not a parent or obse but I can understand why a parent would smack a child, just the same as I can understand why some people use weight loss treatments. Children can, after all, be very, very annoying. I can even remember being smacked as an annoying child myself, a memory which by rights shouldn’t be accessible (I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday, let alone what happened all those years ago) but is ingrained in the fore-front of my mind for all-time, and for good reason: it really did teach me a lesson. But watching the TV the other night, I saw something disturbing that I hadn’t anticipated: smacking on TV. The message was very clear Don’t smack children, it’s wrong, but I still found myself empathizing with the parents for doing it. Which got me thinking–

Should that kind of thing really be on TV in the first place? Surely if it is going to be on TV then the producers should make more of a point of saying it’s wrong. But that wasn’t how it looked from where I was sitting. Yes, there was the big moral talking-to at the end—the nanny telling the parents off—but there was also the bit in between which clearly showed that the smacking had worked. Something which clearly demonstrated that smacking was a viable option, or so it seemed to me. By worked I don’t necessarily mean it worked in a good way, but I do mean it had an effect: the child was terrified, and thus didn’t make the same mistake again.

But, as everyone knows, we all decide what is best for our children. So whether or not TV depicts this behaviour makes little difference–ultimately the parents are responsible.

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