My initial comment here is that I don’t have any moral objection too spanking as such, but I have never been in the situation yet when it has been warrented.

Personally I too was spanked as a child – although very very rarely by my parents, but quite often in school. It has since been outlawed in Australian schools, but I remember getting the strap in primary school across the palm literally hundreds of times of the 6 years I was there, and I was also caned in high school.

The one thing I do remember is none of it modified my behaviour at all, actually that isn’t true, it actually made me quite distrusting of authority. The reason for this was simple – at least half the time when I was punished in such a way at school it was for something that I hadn’t done – this was true given that unless you can prove innocence guilt was often assumed.

So to this day I have what I would call a healthy disrespect for authority and tend to believe that in life respect is earned through your actions and is not something that can be forced onto a person, nor does it come from a job title or a position in society.

Having said all that there will most likely come a time when I feel that a ’smack’ is in order, but it will come with an explanation, and it will be a last resort or in response to something major and not for a minor infraction.

But, yes, I remember a few episodes of getting the cane myself, but my mum was not the type to apologise or reason with a child. Now she tells us why she did what she did.

I make peace easier and faster with my boys.

And yes, I think we see this as a form of discipline and not abuse as some other culture would.

My belief is that, enforced by the predominant influence of Confucius teaching in Chinese-influenced upbringing, children are taught to be respectful and thus tend not to rebel when reprimanded this way. It is taught that parents know best, never to challenge their authority.

Thus (again my opinion) kids who went to Chinese educated schools as opposed to the others, generally end up with very different values about and toward their elders.

However, I am not saying that Confucius teachings include physical reprimands. I don’t know either way.

Again I may be wrong here, but I dare say most runaway kids of strict parents (as opposed to abusive parents) are not Chinese-school educated.

That said, I didn’t mean to shock with my story (note it was a single event). It did have an impact but I don’t harbour ill feelings toward my parent(s). Like Lynn said, such is not an unexpected aspect of our culture here.

Thank you for tagging other Daddys. It is interesting to here this topic from a male perspective.