Smacking is back!
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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