THERE can’t be many of us who escaped childhood without a skelp on our backsides. I don’t remember many such occasions, not because I did not deserve them, but because a sharp word from my mum was usually sufficient to make me stop whatever mischief I was up to. The one time when I recall being soundly smacked (I had bitten my sister) still rankles, since like most children I was essentially biddable. It stands out in what was otherwise an extremely happy upbringing.

In step with most parents of their generation, my mother and father were only doing what they thought was best. But times change, and just as belting kids at school is now viewed – rightly – as Dickensian, so too should hitting your offspring. The impact might be invisible, but it can leave a mark far longer-lasting than a bruise.

Yet while I believe all physical punishment is unacceptable, and should become a thing of the past, I have some sympathy with Be Reasonable Scotland. Opposed to the Government’s decision to outlaw smacking, it points out that this will criminalise an age-old and effective form of chastisement used with restraint by decent, caring parents and guardians whose intention was always to protect a child, not seriously hurt it. Like others, it feels that with this injunction, government is intruding into territory where it does not belong.

This is only the latest in a series of proposed initiatives that crosses the line between public and private domains. Earlier this month an environmental pollution expert advocated that smoking in your own home where it might impact on vulnerable passive smokers – children or the elderly or carers, among others – should be forbidden. Given that only a few years ago nobody could have imagined that lighting up in a car with children in the back seat would become illegal, one suspects there will be considerable political and medical impetus behind this latest recommendation. And in an ideal world, where health is the only measure of well-being, it is a sound idea. But this is not an ideal world, and there is much more to being a valuable, law-abiding individual than kicking all your anti-social habits or dreading the knock of law enforcers at the door.

Those who are obese don’t need to be reminded that they are now viewed by some as agents of their own misfortune, and might soon have to explain why they deserve weight-loss or indeed any other kind of surgery unless they reform their ways. And, as NHS resources come under ever greater pressure, like it or not decisions about who should be eligible for certain medication and operations are increasingly going to take into account the patient’s lifestyle. Soon all our medical records could read like Bridget Jones’s Diary, prefaced by calories consumed, fags smoked, units quaffed and gym visits body-swerved.

Call me paranoid, but the thought that a government can impose its will on the way I or others live makes me uneasy. I admit I wince when seeing a parent smoking over their baby’s pram, or slapping their infant’s hand in anger. There is no arguing that, wittingly or not, these are destructive acts. But the way to regulate a civilised country is not by filling the statute books to bursting point, and creating a climate in which the Stasi would have flourished. The resources required to police transgressions of at-home smoking, for instance, or gross over-eating, or a thwack on the back of a toddler’s knees would be more effectively and persuasively spent on educating us out of old-fashioned and harmful behaviour.

Legislators might argue that these laws are intended to do just that, and more swiftly than ethical reprogramming of the nation at large. Whether it’s teaching us the long-term cost of violence against children, or of passive smoking or of eating until we are fit to burst, new rules and regulations are our panjandrums’ way of showing us how to live an optimum lifestyle for our own and everyone’s good. And at least expense to the public purse.

Yet consider how quickly the messages about drink-driving or smoking during pregnancy have been accepted across almost all social groups. Most of us have become decidedly judgmental about people who flout these rules, and unafraid to say so. The opprobrium of our fellow citizens is clearly as effective a weapon in the fight to do better – arguably more so – as criminalising these acts.

Striking the balance between state interference and personal responsibility is an exceedingly tricky task. Even so, I would rather people voluntarily changed their ways than have a heavy-handed government employ snoops and wardens. And while you could argue that, for instance, the smacking ban is for the benefit of all, once measures like this have been established as a principle, where do you draw the line? When does well-meaning intrusion become a charter for excessive control?

I don’t know the answer to that, but nor do I want to give those in power the opportunity to enlighten me.