Smacking is up for debate once more after a leading group of doctors called for England to follow Scotland and Wales and ban it.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health say alongside making it more difficult for medics to identify cases of abuse it’s harmful to children and can perpetuate violence.

Maybe like many children of my generation I was occasionally smacked as a child.

It’s what happened (or was threatened) if you ‘back chatted’ or were caught giving your brother a thump.

Whether it perpetuates a cycle of violence I’m less sure about – albeit will willingly bow to the experts?

I didn’t get into trouble at school for any such behaviour but yet giving my siblings a sly dig at home as kids wasn’t unheard of – and them me.

That said, I refuse to sit in the ‘it never did me any harm’ camp either.

Cars without seatbelts and homes without central heating may not have caused some children harm decades ago – but for others it did and so the ‘but I turned out ok’ approach isn’t an argument on which these issues should be debated.

Smacking is lazy parenting.

It happens when adults have run out of options and are thin on patience. It’s a knee-jerk reaction from an irritated and hassled grown-up.

Children have an immense superpower to sometimes make adults exceptionally irritated because we’re human and not highly trained behavioural experts.

But I cannot make the connection between a 45-year-old man laying his hands on a six-year-old child and successful discipline.

And neither can some of the country’s leading children’s doctors.

A poll on this website last week indicated more than 60% of our readers are still in favour of smacking and just 30% keen for a ban – with a few in the mix who were undecided.

It was predictably accompanied by a handful of comments that argued ‘feral’ kids today would be better behaved if a hand was taken to them occasionally.

For those intent on believing today’s young people are more poorly behaved than cohorts from 50 years ago – there are multiple reasons why that may (or may not!) be the case and I’m convinced they don’t revolve around kids today lacking corporal punishment.

In England, a parent can use the defence of ‘reasonable punishment’ to justify hitting a child under existing legislation.

But apply the rule to adults and it immediately sounds ridiculous.

What if it allowed for one half of a couple to reprimand the other? Or permitted a boss to give an employee a casual smack if they did something wrong? Sounds insane doesn’t it? So why do we allow it towards the smallest in society?

And one day of course, they won’t be the smallest, and if there’s nothing in your parental armoury other than physical violence what happens when you’re dealing with strapping teens? Because they too won’t behave properly 100% of the time – and then what?

Violence towards any human – or animal – is wrong. I hope getting my children to understand that will see them grow into compassionate, kind, gentle people.

And that rests on me leading by example.