I used to defend smacking children. Now I see it as an abuse of power.

Some of my harshest punishments came about because, all too aware of our society’s inherent racism, they did love me and wanted me to do and be better in an environment that stacked the odds against me. I believed this was the right strategy because they did. No wonder, then, that I felt personally affronted by bratty children. Kids cossetted in a way that I thought black working-class children weren’t allowed to be. They could be wayward while we always had to yield to the will of our parents.

And then, I had my own children. With the power now vested in me by the tiny person who called me Mummy, I found myself sickened after those moments when frustration and sleeplessness spilled over into shouting. I’d see my son look at me with something near terror and I’d be stunned into remembering what it had sometimes felt like to be smacked by my parents. That at times, I had felt hated. That I was bad. That the badness was something to be exorcised through pain. Or the reverse, that goodness could be smacked into me. After all, as the Bible says, spare the rod and spoil the child.