Smacking is back!
By | Apr 28, 2009
In August of this year there will be a postal referendum, a public poll, on the question Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand? The question is confusing but its intent is to have the child discipline law passed in 2007 overturned and to make it legal to use physical force to correct children again in New Zealand.
A group of organisations throughout New Zealand are working together to reduce any threat to the 2007 law. More information on the referendum and how the law is working is available on the vote yes website.
As is so often the case a complicated issues is broken down into polar opposite simplistic positions. Maybe this is an inevitable result of the amount of information bombarding us from every media outlet competing for our consumer buck. Consider the way I chose the title of this post. One short line has to catch your attention. Polemic works best.
There was so much of value that was lost during the last debate, is this our second chance? The poll is so badly written that is favours one outcome. “Should a smack as part of good parental discipline… ” Well the answer is right there in the question, good parenting has been written in. We are not asking whether a smack is part of good parenting; but when it is should it be illegal. We are not really engaging with what good parenting might look like at all. There are all sorts of issues that are lost with the type of debate we see around high profile emotive bills. For example: Is time out – or love withdrawal – any better?
No disrespect to the people who have written the question for the referendum. When you see things a certain way and feel strongly about them, it becomes hard to see the bias. (It happens often in the polls on this site).
How about finding a way to set the debate in the direction we actually want behaviour to go? How about a bill that makes ‘not playing with your children in the evenings’ a criminal offence in New Zealand.
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Comments
Charlene
April 30th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Indeed a poorly worded question but perhaps, as you note, it provides the opportunity to open up a debate that is bigger than to smack or not to smack. Researchers (see http://www.cyc-net.org/features/ft-smackban.html) from Otago University found, from a review of 49 studies, that smacking was consistently linked to negative outcomes such as higher rates of bad behaviour in the week they were smacked, and lower rates of internalised morality, that is an understanding of why a behaviour was wrong rather than avoiding the behaviour for fear of the consequence. Physical punishment was also associated with low self-esteem, depression, anti-social behaviour and aggression in children, and also in adults who had been disciplined as children. The research evidence is consistent to the extent that it has been described as “indisputable”. The only “positive” outcome of smacking was immediate compliance. The US has recently justified its use of torture as acceptable because it is effective.
Yet, I am side-tracked, I am arguing against smacking. The questions that must be asked are not just to smack or not, but what is the goal of parenting? Is it immediate compliance, that my child jumps when I say jump? Or is it that my child is able to empathise with others, that she learns to act according to an internal compass of right and wrong regardless of who is watching, and even that he learns to question what those in authority would say? What is the goal of parenting? The enforcement of rules or the development of relationship?
How wonderful would it be, if we went beyond questioning to hit or not to hit, to consider how our theology informs our parenting beliefs and practice, to question where our culture positions parenting in the ranks of money, time, and status, and to present to our communities a new view of parenting. A counter-cultural view of parenting, with relationship at its heart, may well present the gospel sufficiently that we can do away with preaching. And even smacking.