OK, your cousin is a "good little mother for giving a smack." You are a fantastic, adult, grown-up, reasoning, thinking mother for realising that other people are not right all the time and working out how to discipline (meaning teach, not hit) your child in a way that works for your family. Not someone who will accept banal, undermining and belittling praise for following a herd.

FWIW, I grew up with being smacked and my sister never cared and was completely off the rails (I just lived in perpetual fear, which still impacts my life today). My DS gets time in and he understands consequences and other peoples' feelings more than my sister did at four times his age! He is also not scared to talk to me about anything, even when we decide together that DS did something that wasn't kind.