Wait, where is it acceptable to backhand a kid across the mouth, in public no less?
The south
I disagree. Lots of kids need a good ass whooping from my experience. I've seen kids that call their mom or dad an asshole or a bitch or cuss them out in another manner. I've known kids that steal from their parents. Kids that get smacked for misbehaving don't do that shit.
Should go without saying but i'm not advocating beating children, i'm ok with smacking disrespectful shits though. Not punching, not kicking, not hitting with another object, not anything hard enough to bruise or welt, just a good old fashioned open palm slap.
Bullshit. Hitting your kids doesn't do anything to rectify that behavior. In fact it usually just makes them sneakier about doing what they were doing. If you have to resort to hitting children because you can't discipline your children in a way that isn't violent, then you aren't a good parent. It's lazy, it's barbaric, and it's fucking outdated.
You wouldn't hit your wife for doing something you disagree with right? So why the fuck would you hit a child?
If there's anything ive learned as someone who was "disciplined" during my childhood it's that fear based relationships are toxic and don't facilitate familial growth and bonding. In fact, it's counter intuitive to that. And it causes subconscious trauma that can effect us well into adulthood.
You know what being "disciplined" as a kid really taught me? How to get away with things I'm not supposed to, and hyper aggression. I used to go to parties/clubs/bars in college to instigate fights and I never really knew why. Thankfully in adulthood and with a little therapy I can unpack that and have been able to move past that side of me.
And that isn't just my anecdote— that's what psychologists have come to as a consensus as the growing body of work supports it.
I know for a lot of people and a lot of regions it's very normalized but when you take a step back and look at it for what it literally is, physically assaulting defenseless children, it's absolutely obscured.
And it being normalized isn't an excuse. You know what else use to be normalized? Racism. Homophobia. Transphobia. Sexism. Etc etc.
And this whole mentality of "it happened to me and I turned out ok" or "it happened to me so what's the big deal?" Is fucking ASININE. That's what creates this cycle is people's willingness to perpetuate it, unwillingness to consider the damage it causes.
And you try to diminish what you're really saying by suggesting a simple "slap" but does it really end there? When that "slap" inevitably fails to change the child's behavior what next? It escalates and turns into full blown abuse a lot of the time.