This may be new to the UK but they started taking authority from parents 40yrs ago. I remember my oldest telling me she was going to "turn me in to child protective services" when she was just 11yrs old. I remember telling her, "let me tell you how that will go... They will come here and take you to kiddie jail and I'll get my life back..." LOL She stormed off to her room and pouted for hours...lol... Never heard another word from her about it... Schools were already teaching kids to "report" parents for anything... This was mid eighties

I disagree with you entirely. I received corporal punishment when less than seven years old at primary school and at junior school immediately following for offences I knew I was guilty of and so felt such chastisement was entirely justified. I am now 72 years old and people that know me and have known me over the years generally think I am a particularly nice and a particularly genuine person. Please produce independent verifiable evidence to back up your claim here that such corporal punishment results in long term trauma as you allege here. You seem to miss the point entirely that there is obviously an enormous difference between reasonable physical chastisement and beating a child with the intention of deliberately causing pain and suffering of that child which is obviously completely unacceptable. Thank you very much, Brent Collins.

Gemma, there's no credible research that supports your opinion.

Utter rubbish. I was smacked as a child, none the worse for it.

@@brentjamescollins9731 well said.

@@HearGodsWord its not even remotely contested by any serious medical or psychological research www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/