Kwayera
Passive-aggressive Mod
You're conflating smacking with physical abuse.A smack, by its nature, is designed to HURT. A child that is misbehaving repeatedly will be smacked repeatedly. Hurt repeatedly. WHY IS THAT HARD FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND?
Let's make a distinction here. Slapping/striking your child on the face with any kind of force? Hitting anywhere hard enough to leave a mark/bruise? That's abuse. Smacking a child open-handedly on their well-padded bottom, preferably with clothing as a barrier, with a motion more to make noise and make a physically but not long-lastingly painful connection between behaviour and consequence? Not abuse.
An anecdote for you. My sister and I were separated in age only by a year and five days. Taking us shopping, for instance, could occasionally be an exercise in frustration when we were very young, but bad behaviour was not usually treated with smacking because we had already been taught the consequence of misbehaviour if we didn't heed warnings. However, a moment's inattention in the car park when mum was packing the car and distracted with my sister had me wandering off; as soon as she noticed, she ran over, snatched me up, gave me a loud - not painful - smack on the arse and then told me why she had done it. Why? Because, as somebody mentioned, a "Catriona, get back here!" in a busy carpark may NOT have stopped me getting run over. The smack instilled in me the importance of the lesson, and it was an important one.
Was my mother abusing me in that instance? Heck no.
As an aside, my mother is an accomplished horsewoman, and her leather riding crop was often brandished at us as a threat. But she never, ever had to use it and I don't think she ever would have.