The kids aren’t all right

Now that the Scots have banned people from smacking kids — both their own and, presumably, those that belong to other people — I suppose we will dutifully follow suit and another one of life’s harmless little pleasures will have bitten the dust. Fair enough, we can still say horrible, frightening things to them in order to exert a bit of discipline. But the immense satisfaction of hearing them howl in pain from a sharp slap to the leg, or a nasty pinch to the upper arm, will be gone for good. 

Not many parents do hit their kids any more. It is already a vanishing art. Smacking unruly brats has been de trop for ages, especially among the middle classes. These days we are expected merely to smile indulgently as they shriek their little lungs out in a restaurant or on an aeroplane (where they shouldn’t be in the first place, which of course is why they’re shrieking their little lungs out).

It hasn’t made the kids any happier, though.