The operative word here must be ‘my’, as of course for any person, however justifiably provoked, to give in to the temptation of smacking someone else’s badly behaved child remains a separate and distinct issue and could well give rise to a charge of Common Assault or even Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (ABH).

What then is the position regarding a parent and his or her own child? Putting aside any issues of morality or social acceptability, where does the law in this country stand on the smacking of one’s own child?

The present position is set out in The Children Act 2004, which came into force on 15 January 2005. Under this Act, it is illegal to smack children hard enough to leave a mark, with parents who transgress facing up to 5 years’ imprisonment if they are convicted. Physical punishment, other than ‘reasonable chastisement’ is thus against the law, with a smack which leads to bruising, grazing, cuts or swellings deemed to be unacceptable. However, there are those who maintain that this merely encourages some parents to favour assaults which are unlikely to cause visible marks, but which may risk causing more serious injury, such as blows to the head or shaking.

A recent case before the Crown Court in Manchester, considered under the new law, dealt with a stressed-out mother who slapped her daughter in a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop after the child refused to eat and ran around annoying other customers. The mother was convicted of Common Assault but acquitted of the more serious charge of ABH. The ‘reasonable punishment’ of a child, which section 58 of the Children Act 2004 permits, had clearly been exceeded in this instance.

It is worth noting that ‘over chastisement’ of a child by a parent may also be a breach of the child’s human rights if it amounts to inhuman or degrading treatment.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has complained that by refusing to remove the defence of reasonable punishment from a parent smacking a child, the new law has in some ways left a grey area, where children are still seen as the property of their parents. An adult slapping another adult would have no such defence open to them. In many European countries there is an outright ban on smacking. In Sweden, a ban has been in force for over 25 years.

This issue remains controversial and the increasing influence of the European Courts may well cause further changes in the future.