Effects of Corporal Punishment

Effects of Corporal Punishment also: Save the Children - (PDF)

Smacking is is usually the result of a parent venting their anger - and rarely does it reflect calm control and predictability that provides the context for a child that prepares them for social interaction later.

Observation of a child who was beaten in the name of proper discipline (as a two year old) resulted in a dyslexic child who learned how to lie rather than face up to problems.

It indicates that a diabolical relationship exists between parents inflicting infants with violence as control and crime becoming a solution to life's problems as the child becomes an adult.

We are not "good hats" and "bad hats". We are complex creatures who learn primarily from experience and secondarily from information. Our experiences are more powerful influences than information. Love is our most powerful interaction.

Smacking children causes problems.

Children in Rudolf Steiner education are brought up gently, with a respect for them as individuals. Smacking is not necessary.

The kids I know who were brought up in this way are socially advanced adults.

The kids I know who were brought up with early parental violence are constantly in trouble with the police.

Mild smacking or if it is very rare may have a benefit, nobody is arguing against that. But parental violence is an intergenerational madness and it is the parent that can stop it, not the child.

Smacking Law

Opinion

At last New Zealand has turned an important corner.

The law change will result in some impact as people will think twice and that time taken thinking will remove much reactive smacking from the picture.

Reactive smacking is more likely to be unjust and disproportional. Parents need better tools than showing their children that violence or chaos is the way to affect people.

Like earlier social law reforms the reduction of the acceptance of violence in general is a slow intergenerational process.

That this law can no longer be an issue, as National voted for it unanimously, brings New Zealand up a few notches on the international ladder of quality of life for our children.

The new law removes the defense of "reasonable force" in the discipling of children in cases of abuse. A smart intervention by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition brought together a massive landslide for the vote on this issue with every member of the National opposition voting for the bill. The amendment does not change the nature of the change, it does not legitimise smacking or seek to define behaviours but states that police should not investigate every inconsequential complaint about a smacking that children may bring in retaliation. Parents who are successfully bringing up their families are an outcome that pushes any smacking into a gray area where the police are very likely to overlook it. However, in a fully dysfunctional war where parents seek to control their children with violence, and people risk getting badly hurt, these may now be prosecuted. Is Simon Barnett (used to be a TV personae, now a parent advocating freedom to smack children) now worried about his freedoms that he has admitted smacking his children on the TV debate? If he is not arrested then perhaps parents have little to fear from the law change. But he should now carefully read and accept the new laws that now govern the limits of his behaviour toward other human beings, even if he considers them his private property.

Point scoring at the expense of children

Also see MP's children threatened - 01 Apr 2007 - The smacking debate - news and coverage

The leader of the opposition, John Key stoops into the "smacking debate" and shows his colours as he cyncially tries to enshrine smacking into the law books. The current law leaves it to the courts to consider. Over the course of time, that has proven to allow some parents to slip through the "reasonable force" loop hole, including the use of weapons against children. No matter the long term consequences.

Parents want cover of the defence of reasonable force so their freedom to ue smacking as a method of control is not criminalised. What other behaviours do they protect alongside their prediliction to adminstering corporal punishment?

MPs in New Zealand are being asked to consider the elimination of the "reasonable use of force" clause as a defense in cases of parental abuse from the crimes act.

This was a conscience issue but now seems a party line divide issue. The Right seek to make it into a parental freedom issue. The Left as a removal of a licence to abuse issue.

It is being attacked as an attack on parents who sense that police will be knocking on their front door to arrest them. As if they would be first on the list.

The debate has missed the point as has John Key who tried to get the right for parents to administer light punishment enshrined in law as a compromise, and thus cheaply ally himself with the 90% of parents that want legal protection to smack, but not hit. But there is no measure of the severity of what constitues "reasonable" and that is left to the court to consider. So why do people who use horse whips famously get away with it? The degree of elasticity in the law allows for it.

Extenuating circumstances and a lawyer will build a case for reasonable force, as "reasonable" implies that the agency of the child is in play against the parent, therefore what is to stop a parent from claiming that her three year old declared war on her so use of a civilian Taser was entirely reasonable?

The current law seems to be too elastic. Social conditions reflect upon what is considered reasonable, and for example, the police use of the Taser weapon (it kills a percentage of people) affects the interpretation of what society deems reasonable under the current law.

The bill change is minimal. Sue Bradford could have proposed a more far reaching legislation, but frankly New Zealand is not ready to stop hitting the kids, not just yet.

Smacking and parental rights

Scoop: Marc Alexander - Smacking away parental rights

There is a law before NZ parliament to outlaw parents who hit their children.

Reactionary forces have voted against this justify it by saying hitting children is a parental right. A parent should be able to choose their weapons, select how to discipline children. The crimes act of 1961 says that a parent is justified in the use of reasonable force as correction towards the child. Marc Alexander in this article asks how hard is it to understand the meaning of "reasonable"? He says this law is adequate. It is not.

Modern thinking on the subject is that parents using ANY violent force against their children will not only make the child backward in life, but it forces the child into a set of calculations that eventually result in criminal actions. Violence is wrong, because children learn by example and hitting children begets a violent society. Extreme cases must be prosecuted. Parents need to evolve their disciple so the child is intelligent enough to solve problems. Children who are hit become teenagers who run away and commit crimes. It is too damaging not to change the law.

Keeping people "in line" is the language of slavery. It is the job of a parent to bring the child up to their best of their ability. Any culture of accepting violence toward children is regressive, socially. Child abuse is an intergenerational disease. The final result is that the child, now an adult, abuses their elderly parents.

Sue Bradford, the Greens MP that has put up the Anti Smacking bill has suffered death threats from irate parents. This is in itself evidence of why the law needs to be stronger so that very severe cases of child abuse as punishment can be prosecuted.

Right wing media claim that the bill removes a fundamental right of parents - to hit their own children. I question that parents have any such "right". Children do not belong to parents. It is time we saw children as our future.