You are not allowed to hit a workmate or your partner, you are not allowed to beat a stranger or force an elderly relative to his knees and whip him with a belt. We hear of elder abuse and one-punch assaults and we shudder in horror at domestic violence.
And yet we are allowed to hit the most fragile and vulnerable members of our society – our own children.
We are not only allowed to do so, we defend our right to do so.
Gosh it confuses me.
Smacking is back in the headlines after a Supreme Court judge in South Australia overturned a father’s conviction on an assault charge brought against him for smacking his 12-year-old son.
The judge said that for parents in disciplining their children “some level of pain is permissible” and that leaving “redness” was “not unreasonable.”
“The suffering of some temporary pain and discomfort by the child will not transform a parent attempting to correct a child into a person committing a criminal offence,” Supreme Court Justice David Peek said.
The comments then lead to each and every major talk show and radio station discussing the divisive topic of smacking.
Radio 2GB host and Today Show commentator Ben Fordham weighed into the debate saying, while he never had, and hoped he didn’t ever have to, he wanted to have the “right” to smack his own child.
He said that sometimes a quick smack from mum or dad is the only way to bring a misbehaving kid into line.
“I don’t want to do it and I’ll hopefully will never need to do it,” he said “but my brother and I both, in times of reflection, both look back on our childhood and say ‘look, as much as we hated it at the time, we kind of needed it’.”
Lisa Wilkinson too entered the fray saying that from time to time her partner, Peter Fitzsimons smacked their kids.
I can see where they come from. I can understand where all the millions of people who agree with them come from.
(In fact studies show 69 per cent of Australian parents smack their children.)
I can see the overarching desire to keep the law out of family homes, and I can see the argument that parents want to be able to parent their own child their own way.
I just wish it were that easy.
What leaves me feeling confused is that as a society we overwhelmingly want to protect our children, we overwhelmingly want the best for our children and yet we refuse to consider laws to protect them.
How is this helpful?
How can one person’s “right” to inflict violence on their own child trump the rights of children as a whole?
“I was smacked as a child and I was fine.”
“Kids these days need to learn boundaries and they need to learn it while young and from someone who loves them.”
“Its okay if you have rules – never around the face, never leave bruises but a spanking is okay.”
We defend our right to have a scale of acceptable violence, we use history as an excuse.
We all should know from our deeply disturbing domestic violence statistics that the normalisation of violence in Australian culture is something we need to change.
The “she’ll be right attitude”, the “I was smacked and I turned out okay” attitude, needs to change because they aren’t doing us any favours.
Just because you were spanked as a child and turned out okay doesn’t mean that the child next door did.
Just because you make sure you only smack your three-year-old across the bum and never slap them across the face doesn’t mean the family down the road do. What about the parents who don’t see the distinction between having the ‘right’ to smack and actually carrying out the action?
By protecting the rights of one set of parents to discipline as they please we undermine the rights of our children as a whole to be safe.
Would we be just as okay with a man telling us “My dad beat my mum and she survived so its okay if I do it to my wife?”
Smacking has been proven over and over again to have negative consequences for children. While it may scare them into stopping what they are doing (by the fear that their parent might hurt them) it doesn’t teach them to think rationally, to manage their emotions or co-operate.
If anything it shows them that their parent isn’t in control of their emotions either.
In New Zealand, along with 33 other countries across the world there are anti-smacking laws. In 2007 the New Zealand government repealed section 59 of the Crimes Act – the “anti-smacking law” – removing the defence of “reasonable force” for adults who smacked their children.
It was highly controversial at the time and is often critisised with statistics thrown about citing the low level of successful prosecutions under the law. What isn’t often cited is that New Zealand laws also make it clear that police have the discretion not to prosecute complaints if the offence is considered inconsequential and “there is no pubic interest in proceeding.”
The argument at the time was not that the laws should be to “ban smacking”, but to change “the social norm” that hitting a child is okay.
In a recent interview Sue Bradford, the MP who was one of the architects of the law, said the law change had provided children with legal protection against “the excesses of physical discipline” and had helped to shift the culture of violence towards children since it was passed.
“I’ve had so much feedback from people in various forums … in the past they almost felt obligated to physically discipline their children, but that’s no longer the case,” Bradford said.
My three kids aren’t angels.
My two rambunctious boys refuse to listen to me like the best of them. They can be just as naughty as they are loving and kind.
I know I could probably get my eight-year-old son to put his school shoes on quicker if he was terrified I was going to spank him with a belt.
I know I could probably stop my six-year-old kicking his soccer ball inside if I threatened him with a slap, and it would be a sure fire way to bring my four-year-old out of a tantrum over a much-wanted kinder surprise in the supermarket but I don’t hit them.
I don’t hit them because it’s wrong.
I won’t hit them because I don’t want them to think violence is the norm.
And I don’t hit them because there is never any excuse for violence against another human being.
No matter how well you turned out.
Do you smack your kids?
Top Comments
Rubbish. Lightly smacking a toddler that darts out across the road is not violence. And yes it would be great if the kid didn't do the wrong thing because he understood why it was dangerous, but how do yo explain these things to a 2 or 3 year old?
By actively making them part of the process every time you cross the road. Make it their job to look for cars.
Use your voice. Teach them about roads. Explain that they're dangerous, that you love him and don't want him to get hurt. Use the tone of your voice to convey the danger and your fear for him, and that you're deadly serious. If he's near the road again, use voice and tone, again, to say "NO! Get back!" or "Come here!". Your voice should be enough, and it works over a longer distance than you can reach to hit.
Your problem is that you're equating violence with education or discipline.
If you think the child is too young to understand you clearly explaining the road danger to them, why would you expect them to understand the association between your smack and the road? If they're too young to understand either, then you may as well be smacking a baby for crying.
One of the things many parents get wrong is overusing their 'serious voice'. If you only ever raise your voice to your children when they're in danger or seriously transgressing (i.e., about to break something valuable or step into the road etc), then they'll *actually be conditioned to pay attention when you do*.
It's the parents who bark commands at their children and scream at them to 'behave' every single shopping trip or such, who have close to zero control over their kids because their method of discipline is woeful or nonexistent. If you discipline your children (and teach them self-discipline, which is the most important part), then you never, ever have to hit anyone and very rarely raise your voice.
I think it's significant that people who hit their kids eventually stop doing so, and often say "oh no, he's too old now". Oh. So you feel fine about hitting a child, until they grow into being able to defend themselves and fight back. Interesting..
Wow, that's a huge leap to make. We rarely smacked our child and stopped when he was about 6 years old. Hardly old enough to "fight back" as you put it. Let me give you some perspective. You would think that society would have become kinder and less violent since smacking has been on the decrease. My husband works as a policeman and I work in Early Childhood. Ask any policeman how they are treated by teenagers. They have zero respect and think nothing of hitting a police officer. They do this because they have been raised with zero consequences for their actions and have been taught all manner of rights, but apparently no responsibility. It is OK for them to be violent and aggressive, but if someone retaliates, it is the end of the world!
In Early Childhood, it is common now for staff to be assaulted by young children. We have been taught that they are not to be told "no", cannot be spoken to in a "negative" way and can never be touched unless it is with "kindness". What this means is that children pretty much do as they please without consequences, even if it means they hurt us or other children. We are not even supposed to remove children from a group setting if they are being disruptive or violent.
I worked with a young girl recently who was asthmatic. She was completely out of control and was screaming her lungs out. This was because she wasn't getting her own way. As a result of being so out of control, she went into a full asthmatic emergency. I was trying to administer her ventolin whilst getting hit, kicked and screamed at. It was only when I picked up the telephone to call an ambulance that she completely calmed down. If she had been given a quick smack on the backside, it would all have been over. She wanted her own way and was just going to scream until she got it. Normally I will ignore children who do this, but it had turned into a medical emergency and something had to be done. The truly astounding thing about this episode was how quickly she shut up when she though that an ambulance would be coming. I have treated this child with nothing but kindness, but she was so used to getting her own way due to shit parenting that she had no respect for adults. Her parents split up over her behaviour and the father hates looking after her because she is so badly behaved.
I should've been clearer that I was speaking specifically of the cases where the parents do stop for the reasons I described. I respect that you have a good heart and behave with care and integrity.
My comment referred to the people I've heard, over many years, saying things like "Nah, he's too big now" or "Oh not any more: He'd belt me back if I tried to spank him now!" and "Yeah they used to hit me, until I grew to nearly their size Ha." etc It would seem that previous smacks and hits haven't instilled a degree of respect that would prevent the kid hitting back.
I'm for discipline. I'm just not for hitting. Kids who are brats aren't acting out because they haven't been "smacked", they're running amok because (excluding psych/medical issues) their parents don't discipline them effectively, or at all. In fact, some of those parents probably do hit their kids:
One of the problems I see with "spanking" or other hitting, as punishment or warning, is that it sets the boundary further. Now a stern voice and/or loss of privileges aren't enough deterrent. Now the child thinks it's not *really* serious until you're about to hit them. The child who gets hit can also become resentful and more defiant. And that defiance will present as non-compliant (sometimes aggressive or violent) behaviour, that the child sometimes won't stop until actually hit, or threatened with it.
Exactly Jarrah. "If she had been given a quick smack on the backside, it would all have been over" both assumes that being hit would shut her up (false in many cases), and that nothing less than being hit would shut her up (which indicates she's been conditioned to consider non-violent discipline as not worth paying attention to).
The main issues which tend to lead to this are inconsistent or nonexistent discipline. If your child only responds to pain instead of words, then you've failed miserably as a parent (and/or there are medical issues which need treating).
To be honest, I wonder about the circumstances of the girl suddenly submitting at the mention of an arriving ambulance. It could be for entirely innocent reasons, or maybe there's more to her apparent fear of having contact with uniformed people who are there to help. Not an accusation against her family, however, I think I'd want to find out why, just to make sure I hadn't missed a red flag.