Smacking: How a generation of Christians changed their mind

The year is 1970. American university campuses are frequently the site of student uprisings. Richard Nixon is one year into a presidency defined by the promise of “law and order” and trust in the government seems to be eroding. 

Into this atmosphere of social chaos steps psychologist James Dobson, an American evangelical whose book, Dare to Discipline (Tyndale) would inform Christian parenting for decades to come.

For much of the 20th century, smacking was largely accepted as a parental right in Western homes. But by the 1950s, that consensus had begun to fray. Psychological research raised doubts about physical punishment, and new ideas about behaviour and child development had entered public conversation. 

“By the time James Dobson is writing Dare to Discipline in 1970, he’s looking around at social chaos and working with children and thinking, something has gone wrong here,” says Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, co-author of new book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How false promises betrayed a generation of evangelical families (Baker). “He can point to what he sees as the rise of permissive parenting and pushback to spanking, and he takes it upon himself to hold the line – to argue [smacking] isn’t just a norm, but something worth preserving, because if we let it go, the world keeps descending into chaos.”

According to McGinnis and her co-author Marissa Burt, this was a moment when smacking was not just defended, but theologised and recast as spiritual obedience. As evangelicalism doubled down on biblical inerrancy, passages such as “whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them” (Proverbs 13:24) were increasingly read as literal instruction. 

For much of the 20th century, smacking was largely accepted as a parental right in Western homes

Dobson’s influence stretched far beyond a book. Burt describes the 1970s as the birth of “an explicitly Christian parenting media market” – conferences, manuals and ministries that promoted “a right and godly way to spank”. Christian parenting advice became tied to an American political moment that prized order and obedience when it wasn’t perceived to be present.

Those attitudes did not remain confined to the United States for long. Burt says they were “exported” across the Atlantic, shaping evangelical parenting culture in the UK too. “There were a lot of shared resources, shared pastors and influential teachers,” she explains. 

But while the model of biblical discipline travelled, the climate in which those teachings first took root has dramatically shifted. Today, a practice that was once encouraged invites suspicion, scrutiny and, in many contexts, even legal consequences.

The case against corporal punishment

Step on to the London Underground today, and you are likely to come across a bright green advert from leading children’s charity the NSPCC which reads: “Make it clear. End physical punishment.” Smacking is already outlawed in Scotland and Wales. But there’s now a push to remove the “reasonable punishment” defence – a legal provision that permits parents in England and Northern Ireland to physically punish their children. 

Statistics on how many Christians have moved away from corporal punishment do not exist, but its once-common presence in both Christian circles and the wider social landscape has diminished.

Gareth Crispin is commissioning editor for Premier NexGen, which seeks to equip Christian parents and carers with practical faith-based guidance and resources. He notes that some of the shift has been driven by empirical evidence. “Part of the argument from the anti-smacking side is that you’ve got actual empirical data that says children are suffering because they’ve been subject to corporal punishment and that there’s a link to abuse,” he says. “They argue that you can’t have one without the other – that you’ve got to stop corporal punishment to stop abuse.”

He also notes the counter-position: “Others would say you can have corporal punishment and stop at a clear line where it doesn’t become abuse.”

Added to this are questions about whether it actually works. “There’s about 50 years of good, robust data,” says Burt. “It shows spanking is a net negative in terms of improving behaviour. It’s often correlated with increased behavioural problems. From a pragmatic perspective, it’s just not particularly effective.”

She is careful to acknowledge the limitations of the data, much of which is self-reported and reliant on memory. “But from the data we do have, there just isn’t a strong case for [corporal punishment],” she says.

Increased access to research might have helped change attitudes, says Kate Orson, a parent educator in the UK. “We’ve just got more information now,” she comments. “There are so many books. There’s the internet. People can access different perspectives. We can be more knowledgeable about what works, what doesn’t work, what the science says – and hear from parenting experts who have training in psychology.”

Orson describes how her own training reshaped her understanding of discipline: “I learnt about the brain science of why children misbehave. The human brain is wired for connection. The limbic system can be viewed like a radar that seeks safety with an adult. When that sense of connection breaks, misbehaviour results.”

She continues: “The best way to teach doesn’t include being hurt. When the body experiences pain, it goes into fight or flight. The brain interprets pain as a signal to enter survival mode. During those moments, quick thinking is needed, not the slow, rational reasoning that can help a child learn.”

Secularism or scripture? 

For some Christians, however, the move away from smacking is not due to better research or deeper compassion, but evidence of a wider retreat from biblical truth. Theologian Aaron Edwards situates the change within a much longer arc of moral decline in the West.

“We’ve lived through the sexual revolution – a throwing off of restraint,” he says. “I don’t think Britain was morally amazing in the 1950s. The rebellion against God was already there. But what changed in the 1960s is that it became brazen. What had been hidden came out into the open. Society stopped pretending to uphold Christian moral norms around marriage, sexuality and authority.”

For Edwards, the move away from physical discipline is less about newly discovered truths and more about a moral atmosphere in which traditional Christian authority is increasingly treated with suspicion: “It’s not someone like James Dobson who invented this,” he adds. “If anything, he refined and caveated it, drawing on child psychology. But he was getting it from the Bible. Corporal punishment hasn’t been imposed on Christianity. Historically, it’s been normal Christian practice. The unusual thing is us now thinking it’s unusual.

“We now live in a post-Christendom context. There’s less instinct to lean on the authority of scripture. And when that goes, practices that once seemed obvious expressions of obedience to God begin to feel strange, even embarrassing.”

If Dobson-era teaching helped build a theological case for corporal punishment, Burt and McGinnis sought to understand how those ideas played out in the home: “In our book, we really wanted to speak to people who had grown up in these communities,” Burt explains. “To help them name some of their experiences, to connect some dots.”

Their approach was a broad, qualitative survey that included “older parents reflecting back and current parents navigating these questions now. “We went back to the primary sources and asked: if someone took these really popular resources in good faith and did what they said, what did that look like?”

They followed up with around 80 adult children, alongside some parents, asking simple, open questions: What did discipline look like? If you were spanked, what did that look like? Burt says respondents who reported negative experiences of smacking “far outweighed those who didn’t”.

Data shows spanking is a net negative in terms of improving behaviour

“Every adult child who filled out our survey or whom we interviewed described negative experiences from the impacts of spanking,” she says. Many spoke of fractured family relationships and a lasting sense of distance from both parents and God. 

However, Burt is careful to stress the research was not designed to produce statistical conclusions. “As we describe in our book, it is very difficult to secure quantitative data on spanking, because it is all self-reported and based on memories and experiences, which can vary widely even within the same family system.”

She acknowledges that while accounts of harm dominated the survey, more neutral or positive reflections tended to surface in wider social media conversations and direct messages. “Anytime I post or speak about Christian spanking practices publicly – and I do a lot – I hear from people in the comments describing that they were spanked and turned out fine, were glad for it, etc.”

The difficulty, she argues, is unpredictability. “It’s a gamble for a parent. Some parents followed the rules ‘by the book’, only a handful of times, and their children still described negative effects.”

From generation to generation

Sharlene Monique, a musician, educator and mother, was raised under the Dobson-inspired models that Burt and McGinnis investigate. Her story reflects the discipline many families considered normal and the quiet shift now taking place among parents who have chosen differently.

“I was raised in a strict Christian home within a deeply established church community,” she says, describing her upbringing in a south London church that was made up of members of the Windrush generation who migrated to the UK in the 50s and 60s. “Smacking was not a daily or even weekly occurrence, but it was present, and it was understood as part of discipline.”

Monique says that church culture influenced parenting expectations more through shared assumptions than explicit teaching. Looking back, she says an “unhealthy” fear shaped more of her childhood than she realised at the time. “While I believe my dad did the best he could, I want my children to have a fear rooted in respect and honour, much like our fear of God, not a fear that makes their heart race when I walk into the room.”

Now a parent herself, she has chosen differently. “From the start, my husband and I decided we would not hit. We understand discipline as formation, not fear.” Yet, in line with Burt and McGinnis’ survey findings, her story resists the simplified idea that corporal punishment results explicitly in harm. “Alongside that strictness was the knowledge that my dad always had my back. That combination of authority and protection gave me confidence and security.”

It is partly why conversations about discipline, faith and smacking are not simple, she says, and why many Christian parents are now revisiting what they were taught. Monique says she sees that shift in her own community. “Across Black Christian families today, there is a noticeable shift in how discipline is understood and practised. In our own lives, we share parenting honestly with a small circle of couples. Watching how my sister parents with her husband, alongside how my husband and I are raising our children, has confirmed that something has changed.”

The decline of corporal punishment is widely accepted; what is disputed, however, are the reasons behind it. For Edwards, the shift reflects a narrowing of the conversation itself. He argues that there is little room today for discussing what he calls a “biblical form” of the practice, distinct from abuse and within a healthy, loving framework, because the topic has become socially radioactive.

“We can’t know the full long-term effects,” he says. “But going on what Solomon says, you are not loving your child when you spare the rod. That’s a really hard thing for people to hear. No one really wants to preach that. It’s not an easy message. It’s not a politically savvy message.”

In his view, the absence of nuance has produced a blanket hostility that collapses all forms of physical discipline into abuse. Even raising the subject can invite suspicion. He recounts a conversation in which advice he gave on the topic was overheard and reported, prompting contact from social services “just because you’re talking about corporal punishment in general.

“People don’t know whether it means abuse. They don’t have any category for it as positive,” he adds. Edwards says he knows other Christian families who have been reported and subsequently assessed by social workers as stable and loving – a contrast, he says, to the severe abuse cases professionals more typically encounter.

He also points to what he sees as an imbalance in research. “Some of that’s to do with funding and reputation. Nobody who is a respected psychologist, pastor or theologian today is doing intensive qualitative or quantitative studies to argue for the positive usage of corporal punishment. Pastors don’t talk about it. People still practise corporal punishment. They just don’t talk about it.”

People still practise corporal punishment. They just don’t talk about it

For others, however, the silence reflects not fear, but theological and cultural change. Within American Christianity especially, attitudes towards spanking have often mirrored broader ideological divides. More conservative evangelical traditions, with a strong commitment to biblical inerrancy and a literal reading of texts such as Proverbs, are more likely to defend corporal punishment. McGinnis says mainline and more liberal traditions tend to apply historical and literary frameworks to interpretation, allowing greater flexibility in how biblical language is understood and applied.

Both sides claim to be acting in the best interests of children. Both appeal to biblical faithfulness. The deeper question, perhaps, is what carries final authority.

Is it, as Edwards suggests, a reluctance to defend difficult verses of scripture in a culture that treats it with suspicion – and, in turn, has that pressure created a lack of teaching, leaving a generation of parents who would not know how to practise corporal punishment within a “biblical framework”, even if they believed in it?

Or is the shift better explained, as Burt suggests, by the outcomes themselves? If the effects are deeply unpredictable, has there been a growing recognition, informed by research, that the risk is simply not worth taking? And does that unpredictability raise a more unsettling question: whether the kind of controlled, clearly defined framework Edwards describes was ever truly present in the first place?

Have Christians moved away from corporal punishment because their reading of scripture has changed or because the culture around them has? Or does the shift simply reflect a growing body of evidence, lived experience and theological reflection that has prompted a generation to re-examine what loving, faithful parenting looks like?

What, then, informs your stance on corporal punishment: scripture, culture, experience – or a negotiated balance of all three?