Spare The Rod And Spoil The Child?

[sandyRoe]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68827782.amp

I was regularly beaten when I was little.  When particularly naughty my feet were sometimes held to the fire.

That never done me any harm.

[sandyRoe]

I think I should add that my initial post was very much tongue in cheek.

I'm also surprised that one of our regular geezers caught a Tom Brown's schooldays reference.

[jno]

it's brought out some unpleasant tales in reply, though, sandy. Mostly I think from older ABers; I doubt many modern parents, or teachers, keep a birch in the cupboard any more.

My parents smacked us occasionally; I vowed I never would. Big people using violence on small people can never be right.

[andy-hughes]

Jno - If you use emotive terms, as others have, like 'violence' anc 'assault', such terms conjure up visions of scenarios that, in the vast majority of homes' simply don't exist. 

[naomi24]

Hurting people by hitting them is violence.

[andy-hughes]

Naomi  - In a semantic sense, that is true. 

But brushing against someone, and hitting them over the head with a shovel are both 'assault', but that does not mean one is the same as the other.

[jno]

you're welcome to try to come up with  a non-violent word for an adult hitting a child, andy. I believe "loving correction" was a term used by a 19th century paterfamilias as he took off his belt or cut a branch off a tree, but it doesn't do it for me.

(The paterfamilias was also allowed to beat his wife, of course - allegedly as long as the stick was no thicker than his thumb; but I think that bit is a myth.)

[naomi24]

andy hughes, dress it up however you like it doesn't change the fact that deliberately hitting someone is both violence and assault.   

[andy-hughes]

I am not 'dressing up' anything, I think we must agree to differ on this one.