SPANKING

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 186, 27 October 1927, Page 1

SPANKING

Boys Welcome It AGE-OLD CUSTOM PSYCHOLOGICAL TALK Bv Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. Reed. 11 a.m. LONDON, Wed. The desirability and usefulness of spanking is being discussed by the leading psychologists. Major Leonard Darwin has recalled that children have been spanked for a million years, and other people have been saying “Don’t” to the method of enforcing a command by making small boys tingle oil a soft, safe place.

Since man became man, If each generation were slightly more docile, what a little horror the primitive child must have been. Dr. Hadfield, lecturer in psychology at King’s pollege, is of the opinion that a child often welcomes a spanking as the only means of getting him out of a condition of sulkiness. He did not advocate corporal punishment, but often it was a short and effective way of righting a moral wrong. “It isn’t the smacking that matters, but the way the boy is smacked,” he said. Meanwhile, a Willesden magistrate faced the concrete problem, and granted application by a girl of 18 for a summons against her father for smacking her, saying, “With their new vote in near prospect, girls of 18 are too old for slapping. You can summons your father.”—A. and N.Z.