The whole programme was titled wrong, it should have been called, "Belters". Most of these people didn't smack, they belted or did it because it was the norm. Look at the women with the hammer incident!! How stupid was that, no intelligence at all, she didn't smack!
Smacking is when the child has been told once, maybe twice that if he/she does it again, they will get a smack. A smack being a short sharp tap on the leg or the back of the hand, not a belt, or smack in the mouth or a thump in the face. There is a big difference between the two.
All our family and all my friends were bought up with smacks. For years parents have "smacked" and in those years, funnily enough, there was respect and a line between naughty and dowright disrespectful. How things have changed with the "no smacking" rule. "
School was the same, get really out of hand and you knew the consequences. If you were really naughty at school and the teacher actually had to contact the parent, the parent would punish the child, not go marching up to the school and say "how dare you give my child detention" What message does that send to the child? If my teacher had contacted my parents and said I had been naughty, then my dad would have dished the punishment BIG TIME!
I turned out fine and so did all my friends and whole generations! Except now.
If there is no discipline, the system breaks down.