I Smack and I'm Proud, ITV, 9pm, 21 September 2006.

TKK’s parents didn’t practice corporal punishment, which makes his subsequent development of a spanking fetish in adulthood somewhat hard to fathom. Maybe, deep down, I feel missed out on something in my childhood which I’m now trying to experience in adulthood.

Or perhaps I’m just a great big strumpin’ perv.

ITV ‘documentary’ I Smack and I’m Proud detailed a series of families who had no qualms about spanking their kids and were prepared to do so on camera. The show opened with the usual clichés about why it’s ok to smack kids:

"I think it hurt me more than it hurt him." Well if that’s the case then why is your child the only one crying?

"It didn’t do me any harm." Apart from turning you into a psychotic disciplinarian-obsessed control freak.

"Spare the rod and you spoil the child." Because a child that grows up without being physically beaten is being spoilt otherwise.

"You have to be a brave parent to admit you smack your child." For sure. It takes real courage to admit to hitting someone who’s less than two feet tall.

The program focused on a series of families: Angela Davies and her three children Marcella, Aaron and Lorenzo; Gary and Tracy Wall (the Wayne and Waynetta Slob of parenting) and their six children; Martyn and Amanda Ayers and their two kids; Denise Williams (who thinks her kids get a ‘buzz’ from being smacked) and her two daughters; plus Jenny and Mark Flanders (not their real surname), who believed they had a God-given right to go forth and (in)breed, and then spank their breed.

Interspersed between the families were brief comments from an almost exclusively lower-class derived sample of pro-smacking parents (surely some of the middle-classes still spank?), the usual talking head snippets (e.g. Dr Miriam Stoppard) and the obligatory superfluous comment from celebrities. Both Ulrika Jonsson and Fiona Phillips were adamant they didn’t smack their kids and I totally believed them (they probably get nanny to smack the kids for them).

The families demonstrated all the inconsistencies and distorted logic which informed their smacking practices, starting with the Davies family.

"I say my piece: you don’t listen, you get wacked."

Angela had clearly graduated from the Tony Soprano school of parenting and was clear as to the reasoning behind her reign of terror: "I love them, that’s why I discipline them. I don’t want them to take drugs or get pregnant; I don’t want them to hurt another child."

Maybe demonstrating to your kids the fine art of assault with kitchen utensils might not be the best way of achieving that.

Davies stated that "I rule this house, I’m in control", but she wasn’t in control of either her temper or the children. In the twelve days the family was filmed she struck her kids twenty times on camera, so one can only imagine what the family home was like when the film-makers left.

"When Tracy smacks ‘em they know it."

Although the Walls had six kids to smack, the focus was on problem-child Aaron, a seven-year old with a mouth like a pissed-up docker. Aaron had a four-year behavioural history of tantrums and swearing, and you didn’t have to be a social learning theorist to see where it came from. While administering a smacking, Tracey and Gary would argue and swear at each other, which goes to show the parenting classes they’d claimed to attended had not worked.

Gary and Tracey had "tried everything" with Aaron, including the "old-fashioned" method of putting curry powder in his mouth. To those who thought soap was the old-fashioned way, they’d tried that as well. But neither of these two methods had worked, unlike pepper, which really did the job (where had they been for these parenting classes? Guantanamo Bay?).

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise Aaron called his dad a "prick", "bastard" and "fuckin’ idiot" if this was the treatment he was receiving. The battle of wills between father and son led to Aaron running away at one point, not that the Slobs noticed: they’d probably have had another couple of kids before realising he’d gone.

"We woz bringing him up wrong."

Martyn and Amanda Ayers had a more clearly delineated problem with their son Mitchell, who had suffered a severe case of dethroning with the birth of his brother Spencer. The Ayers had planned originally for Mitchell to be their only child and had consequently “spoilt and mollycoddled” him. The birth of Spencer and the resulting loss of attention had clearly affected Mitchell’s behaviour, and six months after Spencer’s birth Martyn decided on a zero tolerance policy:

"One day he wound me up and wound me up and then I hit him. He cried for 10-15 minutes and was shocked and then was perfect for 15 minutes after. I thought: ‘blimey, is this what it takes?’"

Martyn had extended this hardline approach to the evening meal, bawling at Mitchell "keep your fucking legs forward" whenever he turned round. Martyn complained at not being to concentrate when at home and wanting a period of quiet reflection after work, which went some way to explaining the real reason his son was being hit so often. Perhaps if he cooled down after work before interacting with his family then there would have been less need for Mitchell to be hit so often.

The most uncomfortable moment was seeing Martyn ask son: "Do you hate me for smacking you?" Mitchell said no, which absolved Martyn of everything.

"The Bible says it’s ok to discipline our children."

Christian couple Jenny and Mark Flanders had five children and looked so inbred that, to steal the old Bill Hicks joke, their eyes were so close together the right eye was in the left socket and vice versa. The Flanders had the authority of the Bible to back up their disciplinarian actions, the Fifth Commandment being such a flexible tool.

The example of daughter Eloise being punished after drawing on the living room floor gave the Flanders the chance to explain their approach. Whenever one of their kids does something wrong they take them into a room and explain what they’ve done wrong. Then smack them. And, like other parents, a mixed message is thrown in when they give their kids a cuddle afterwards. So the child does something the adult considers ‘wrong’, is smacked and is then cuddled afterwards. Now who’d be confused by behaviour as consistent as that?

Demonstrating the strong vein of rationality informing his decision making Mark stated that it’s important "children learn to respond to their parents rather than receiving a beating by a copper ten years later."

Er, right. I see the connection. Still, you wouldn’t expect the strongest demonstration of logical thinking to come from a Christian.

"My daughters are a pain in the arse."

The final family was Denise (I smack, therefore I am) Williams and her two daughters Page and Charley. Mum would smack for such heinous crimes as not being able to open the door because her daughters’ room was messy. In Denise’s history were features similar to Angela’s: a father from the army who practiced a strict regime of punishment ("his belt would be undone if I wasn’t in by nine") who one day punched his daughter in the mouth after she contravened his oppressive rules.

Was it effective? Well Denise didn’t sleep with anyone until she was 20, although later in life stole money from a service station in Pontypool and threatened the cashier (an old lady) with a hammer, for which she received six months imprisonment. She’s also served time for fraud (three months) and another few weeks for assault. So a successful disciplinarian upbringing there.

An almost complete inability to see links between their childhood experiences and subsequent behaviour as adults was evident in the closing sequences where Harley Street psychologist Dr Lucy Atcheson met the parents. Angela grew up in Singapore where her father was in the British Army. She said he was a "strict disciplinarian" who "didn’t know how to love" and "treated me like one of his soldiers".

Sound familiar?

Rather than recognising she’d become a clone of my father and respond to the psychologist’s suggestion she be more demonstrative in her loving, Angela responded that she [the psychologist] was "going on like a broken tape-recorder". Well, at least she didn’t wack her on this occasion.

When the good doctor went to Devon to visit Martyn and Amanda there was slightly more insight (or guilt) and a contrast in results. On viewing the footage for the first time Martyn looked visibly uncomfortable, especially the extract where Mitchell was told to "keep your fuckin’ legs forward". As Lucy pointed out, Mitchell was simply curious at to what his dad was doing and turned around to watch him. Partly as a consequence of seeing his own behaviour Martyn had decided to stop smacking his eldest son, although it’s inevitable in these type of programs there has to be a 'happy' ending in the narrative, no matter how contrived.

The vast majority of the parents featured were unaware of the change in the law in 2005 which states that if the inflicted punishment leads to more than an actual passing mark the parent could face up to five years imprisonment; I’m not sure what the sentencing options are for putting pepper in your kid’s mouth. As was pointed out by the health professionals, small children are often unable to see the connection between the smack and the misdemeanour, and become increasingly desensitized to the physical punishment. They also tend to be focus more on the punishment received rather than what they are told they’ve done wrong.

With the ending of corporal punishment in state and private schools and the outlawing of the practice in the family other European countries (and a subsequent reduction in juvenile violence) it’s probably only a matter of time before a bill is introduced before Parliament, which will end the techniques employed by the appropriately named Andria Bowes-Adolfess, using smacking to show "wrong from right".

Little Hitlers, one and all.