SHOULD IT BE A CRIME TO HIT YOUR CHILD

A child is screaming in the aisle of a supermarket. He is four years old. His mother, laden with groceries at the end of a long day at work, is struggling to get to the check-out before the shop closes. She has tried reason. She has used all the ‘positive alternatives’ recommended in self-help books. She has offered blandishments and threatened ‘removal of privileges’ as the childcare manuals suggest.

The boy carries on screaming, louder and louder, for his mom doesn’t want to give the boy the chocolate he is demanding. He is throwing food around. As his mother starts to queue, the boy makes a blot for the door and out into the busy street. His mother dashes out and grabs him just before he steps into the road. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she shouts, delivering a smack, sharp and stinging, across the back of the legs. The child whimpers … and finally stops crying.

Similar scenes take place every day across the country, and we all react in different ways. Whether a father of three or a single woman with no children enjoying a drink in the pub – everyone has an opinion on smacking and, by extension, corporal punishment.

Who has the right to smack a child? And who has the right to tell parents what they should and shouldn’t do?

At present, with the agreement of the parents, childminders can smack children within the bounds of ‘reasonable chastisement’ under the 140-year-old law which still governs parents’ physical relationship with their children. Changing that law is one of the strongest signals the Government can give that it does not approve of smacking, beyond banning it totally.

The Government has been under growing pressure to ban smacking outright. When David Blunkett was still Education Secretary, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child urged the Government to make smacking illegal. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has long argued that children should have the same legal rights as adults. Hitting someone over the age of 18 could put the assailant in court. Why should hitting a child be legal?

Smacking was banned in comprehensive schools in the 1980s. Private schools followed suit a decade later. Anti-smacking groups argued that it was illogical not to extend the ban to all those looking after children. Since Sweden banned smacking a decade ago child deaths at the hands of parents have fallen to zero. In Britain it is running at one a week. Countless studies say that smacking does not work, it merely gives children the sense that violence is an appropriate response to get what you want. Smacking could also psychological as well as physical scars.

But the Government has consistently refused to move on and ban smacking for parents or even childminders. These relationships with children are private and therefore beyond the interference of the state. This attitude is well manifested in a well-known quotation ascribes to Mr. Blunkett: “I do believe that the right to smack in exceptional circumstances is one which should remain with parents and child carers who are carrying out the explicit wished of parents.” However, he admits, “I think I probably smacked each of my three children two or three times over the whole of their childhood when I thought it was the only way of getting the message across. It worked at the time. It was the last resort, but I do not believe anyone should smack their children on a regular basis, day in, day out. Smacking as a constant method of control is not effective in the end.”

But after Blunkett was moved to the Home Office in 2001, the Department for Education officials, long wedded to the idea of banning smacking at least for childminders, blew the dust off their plans. Now childcare organizations are asking: why not go the whole way, bringing the UK into line with UN demands and banning smacking outright? “This is another step towards getting the public to accept that children should not be smacked,” said one senior official.

But such a move raises all sorts of political risks – risks which the Government is not willing to take. In 2000 an opinion poll revealed that 84 per cent of parents believed that they, and not the state, should choose how they and their childminders disciplined their children. Earlier the same year research revealed that 51 per cent of parents wanted corporal punishment reintroduced in schools to tackle increasing classroom disorder. Among working-class parents 60 per cent were in favour, with the proportion falling to 40 per cent among the middle classes. Another poll showed that 88 per cent of parents believed “it is sometimes necessary to smack a naughty child.”

Former Premier Tony Blair admitted that he smacked his children and then felt guilty about it. The Archbishop of Canterbury has admitted that he smacked his daughter, Rhiannon, and also then felt guilty about it. So, smacking in the UK is still a common occurrence. So, in the foreseeable future the mother in the supermarket will still have ‘reasonable chastisement’ as her final option.

(by K. Ahmed, http://www.theobserver.com)

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