MPs push for smacking ban, but does it work?

Most parents agree: smacking is not a good thing.

It's not good to get to the point where you feel the need to smack your child and it's not good when they're so naughty that it's the last resort for stopping the behaviour.

Research also shows it's not good or even all-that-effective parenting. Studies show that smacking a child has negative consequences. It decreases children's moral internalisation - the child won't learn the lesson you're trying to get across anyway - and it undermines a positive relationship between parent and child, according to research reported on site of the Wave Trust, a charity devoted to reducing violence.

Punishments such as going without pocket money or being sent to their bedrooms might be more effective, according to research by Save the Children and the National Children's Bureau.

MPs are making a fresh push to give children the same protection against assault as adults, with an amendment to legislation being debated in the Commons. Currently the amendment is tabled.

Protecting children from hitting is important. But can you legislate good parenting, really?

Child abuse is already illegal. Will an outright ban against smacking actually help those youngsters at risk of real, serious, life-disrupting and sometimes life-threatening abuse?

The ban is backed by the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, a coalition of more than 400 professional and other organisations including the NSPCC and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. It said a study a decade ago showed 91% of children had been hit, almost half on a weekly basis and more than a third "severely".

“The law must send the clear message that hitting children is as unacceptable as hitting anyone else,” said Alliance spokesman Sir William Utting.

But we don't need laws that send a message. Does anyone really think that people who routinely beat their children think society and the law are on their side? We need resources to social workers, counsellors and even support for grown-ups so they can handle the frustration and anger that results in smacking.

Will this law actually make it easier to keep grown-ups from hitting children? If so, great.

But instead of concerning themselves so much with children's "rights", lawmakers should concentrate more on improving their actual lives. From the outside this looks like another instance of government trying to get involved with what goes on behind the closed doors, an area that's notoriously hard to police.

Picture: a child holds an anti-smacking sign on a march to Downing Street

Comments

[Sally]

I very much agree with Delilah's comments. My point was that discipline is best worked out by the parents in the family. Creating laws, or even moral judgements, about good or bad methods of discipline only serves to make the task more complicated than it needs to be. After all, whether the thing that suits your family best is time-out on the naughty step or a smack on the bottom is surely a matter of personal choice.

What I find most galling about the smacking debate however is the idea that we are all just one smack away from abusing our children. There is a SIGNIFICANT difference between giving a child a smack and abusing them. There is a real danger with some of these discussions that we lose perspective on this. I have heard of countless examples where parents have been brought under suspicion by teachers and nurses because an accident, or a smack on the hand has been mistakenly seen as the first step in abusive behaviour.

When we live in this kind of culture of suspicion, it is not surprising that parents worry about doing the right thing all the time and feel uncertain, or even guilty, about the choices they make. As Delilah says, this can do neither the children nor the adults in the relationship no good at all.

[Delilah]

Chewing this over at the kitchen table with my neighbour (a teacher) two things came up:

1. There's no doubt that smacking is often done in anger and certainly in my experience can result in a general feeling of unbalance and nervousness in the house for a day or so afterwards. But it strikes me that much of this is due to parental guilt, nothing to do with the impact of the smack on the children. If parents weren't made to feel so bloody guilty about smacking (and remember I am talking about a smack on the bottom after a warning - as an alternative to psychological punishments like sitting on the naughty step etc, NOT savage beatings) it probably would have no worse psychological effect on parent or child (and perhaps less) than naughty steps etc. Certainly that's how I remember being smacked by my parents - it was the reasonable consequence of stepping out of line, my own fault, not theirs, and over a lot quicker (for everyone) than not having pudding for three days. If they had come over all teary and started apologising, it then would have become VERY upsetting. Children need to believe that their parents are the fount of true justice. The same is true of any discipline system. So any government initiative that comes in and undermines a non-harmful system of family justice that is fair and works is going to do huge harm, to both parents and children.

2. Reflecting on the cultural bias of smacking, smacking is a quick, universal punishment that doesn't require a lot of monitoring and enforcement - so very suitable for larger families. If families were still routinely three or more children to one full-time parent I suspect this proposed smacking law wouldn't have got beyond the park bench. I know SM apparently raised 5 kids with nothing more than a murmered "please!", but also (by her own admission) with an army of servants trained in the art of thinking out AND MONITORING complicated motivations and punishments effective for each child.

If the parent is happy and relaxed and sufficiently interested in their child's daily life and interests I'm not convinced that non-smacking justice is any more effective than smacking, both can work well, it's a bit like arguing about whether a vegetarian diet is better than a meat-based one. Plenty of very well-balanced people seem to have grown up under the threat of the hairbrush or the wooden spoon. Like any justice system, you know it's working when you don't have to apply the penalty very much if at all - if you're punishing them all the time, something's wrong, and it has nothing to do with whether the punishment is physical or psychological.

[mumoftwo]

Whimsey, no doubt you have a delightful son and I'm sure that is a reflection on you. However, I think your mother in law is right, there is a good dollop of luck in the mix. I have so many friends (and my own mother was like this) who were just so pleased with themselves about how obedient and good natured their first child was, and congratulating themselves on how their firm but fair parenting was really working, only to have a very different second child, where it was all quite quite different...It turns out their 'brilliant little sleeper/eater/obedient toddler' was a matter of chance, not upbringing. I'm not saying having high expectations doesn't help, but these don't work with all personalities and not all children are strongly motivated to be parent-pleasers.

[Whimsey]

I do find it most peculiar that other people's children behave so wildly. Mine didn't. He really, really didn't. Maybe being an only, and us older parents, just made things easier. He wasn't an angel, but he was like years' away from misbehaving in the way B describes.

I seem to recall I made him sit on the stairs once, for being 'mean' (probably grabbing their toys) to another child when I had other mums and children over to play.

My m-in-law said I was lucky to have a child that wanted to please his mother (and then look DARKLY at his dad!!!!!)(who never wanted to please her, and still doesn't!). But I never consciously wanted my son to want to please me, and find it a bit gulping that it might be so, as it makes me into a ghastly smother-mother type. But hubby and I just had good expectations of his behaviour, and he's lived up to that. He can get gnarly and stroppy and mouthy a bit now he's a teen, but I simply say 'we don't talk to you like that, so please don't talk to us like that', then he doesn't. He really is the most fabulous son, and we are so, so proud of him! (gosh, chokes!)

[B]

"Having said that, I don't go along at all with the rationale that you shouldn't smack your children as you wouldn't smack your husband. Well, yes, obviously, but I also wouldn't send my husband to his room, put him on the naughty step or take away his favourite toy and make him say sorry to me. That's because he doesn't bite me (see above), chant 'poo poo' at the dinner table, snatch toys off his friends, draw with crayons on his bedroom walls :)"

Very good point. Also my husband doesn't run into the road, throw my favourite music into the toilet, deliberatly lie to me or refuse to get dressed in the morning.

I have ended up using smacking occasionally as a discipline methods for my son. Not sure I need to justify it - it works for us as a family, I am angry at the time - of course I am, he has broken rules! but I try not to do it in anger any more than I would any other discipline method.

Smacking is on bum, light slap and reserved for occasions when he has deliberatly done something dangerous to himself or others after being told not to. For example - continuing to swing the metal toilet roll holder round and round when I was running a bath. He got a sharp order to put it down, then a warning that I would count to five, then a smack on the bum when he didn't obey me.

He says sorry for disobeying, I say Ok and we hug.

[Whimsey]

Well, if I earned a quarter of a million dollars (round about £100k here, give or take currency flux?), I'd just sit back and be BLOODY GRATEFUL.

Is this really what Americans are arguing about at the moment, whether to feel sorry for this guy?

Presumably it's just because $250k pa is so peanuts compared to the kind of money that Obama and McCain make, that they feel this guy is 'poor'?????

[Gipsy]

Hmmm interesting bit of info in today's news story on this subject in The Times:

"Even if Mr Wurzelbacher was in a position to buy the plumbing business he works for, it would be unlikely that his personal income would ever climb over $250,000. Currently he earns much less, he admits, so would probably be in line for a tax cut under Mr Obama's plans."

[Gipsy]

Whimsey the whole thing with Joe the Plumber rests on his earning $250,000 a year - it is the whole point he's trying to make. I'm not sure if he is earning it now, but for definite he will be earning it by next year, which is when Obama will be in charge should he win the election. $250,000 is the point above which he'll be liable for whatever it is that Obama is planning.

Personally, I don't really give a toss that someone earning that much might have to pay a little more tax. The tax burden in the US is fairly minimal as it is compared to other developing countries, and they have a great deal of poverty at the bottom end that we wouldn't be willing to put up with in the UK. Sure he's worked hard for his money but then so does Joe Bloggs earning $30K a year - it is ridiculous to use that as an argument. Sorry, I just find it a bit hard to find sympathy for folks who might have to pay a little more tax and might not be able to buy those extra bottles of wine for the cellar this year...times are tough, and they're going to be tough for a while. Surely the gain (by getting the economy back on its feet) will outweigh the short term pain for this plumber's business in the long run?

[Whimsey]

Delilah, I may be completely wrong, but I picked up somewhere along the way that Joe the Plumber earns a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Is that so? (if it is, he must be doing as well as Reg the Plumber over here in the UK!)(current cartoon joke is the mansion with a sign on the drive saying 'Tradesmen's entrance' and when you go round there the parking spaces are full of Jags and Rollers har-har.)

[Delilah]

Haha I see "Joe The Plumber" (who just ruined Obama's unplanned photo-op on Joe's humble rustbelt doorstep by cross-examining Obama critically, publicly, and accurately on his tax proposals) is quoted as saying that he "didn't grow up with a silver spoon- more like a wooden one and it was usually on my butt".

Seems like a likeable, intelligent, well-adjusted guy. If a bit "lower class".

[Sanah]

i wonder if you only mention wife beating when you answer my posts SM because i mentioned i come from africa or because my name sounds arabic.

it seems like you look down on people who you think are lower class or less wealthy. so id first start off by saying i went to grammer school and studied physics at Imperial College and my husband went to private schools all his life and is now a consultant surgeon. i drive a 4 year old lexus and he drives a 4 year old mercedes. our family's wealth counts in the millions of BRITISH pounds here but was all made from black gold back home in africa. both my parents come from upper class landowning families. will you overlook my foreigness then SM? money is the great equaliser as the chinese and arabs are learning now too and its just too bad you cant go and colonise other counry's resources to start off an industrial revolution like 200 years ago...

a rule of thumb here, the farther away an immigrant comes from, and the poorer their country, the greater the turmoil going on and the harder the Uk makes it for them to travel here, the richer and greater connected that immigrants family must be to have got them over here. to pay for hte tickets and bribes and fake or whatever passports, they need connections so even if they turn up here bedraggled and bewhildered, its not your ordinary middle class or working class person who could have made it. i reckon only the top 5% of people here in the UK have the resources to get themselves and their families out if war or revolution/ unrest ever came here, maybe another 20% can get one family member out, but its an interesting question to think on and maybe plan for.

as to smacking, its not necessary but what is necessary is that you bring up a tolerable human being that other human beings can get along with. if you bring up a spolit child and give them everythnig they want by the time they grow up no one will be able to stand them.

alot of people become nice agreeable human beings because of smacking. they were the ones that needed just that much intervention to walka straight path than other children and they got it. these kids who get ASBOS or hooded thugs, they fear nohing and no one and perhaps many wouldnt have become like that had intervention been taken at an earlier stage.

[Delilah]

Troll alert. In more ways than one!

[tsk]

Is this really the original SM?

[Gipsy]

SM. Oh. Good. Grief.

[supermother]

Nowadays the lower your class and IQ the more likely you believe violence makes children behave. I accept that if you go back to the days when boarding and day schools beat children there was a lot of it going on amongst all classes but that is not true now.

Take any group of parents in the UK and you will find I am right - on average the less well educated and more backward they are and that includes immigrants from Africa etc and countries where even wife beating is pretty much normal, they are more likely to be violent to children. After a while everyone will realise it's dangerous, illegal, nasty and psychologically damaging and you're all getting there even immigrants from cultures who believe we should hit children and working class people and others but it's a long slow haul and we needed a clearer ban than the current prohibition on leaving marks to aid parents long in ending this outlandish practice which has no place in a civilised society. Presumably all the child beaters would be happy if their husband were allowed physically to chastise them or their employer?

[whimsey]

Sannah, maybe I've just been exceptionally lucky with mine, but I do find it really quite bizarre that some children seem to run so wild that anyone seriously thinks that you have to beat them into behaving well. Where on earth does all this wild behaviour come from? I dont' get it, I really don't.

However, I think you raise pertinant points about potential culture-clashes which can cause problems all round. And we certainly know, grimly, that some children do run hideously wild, as all the gangs and knife crime demonstrates. But if there are answers, I doubt they are quick and easy ones, sadly.

[mumoftwo]

Agree with Whimsey, Sally's suggestion that the state truly has no role in monitoring parental authority is just ridiculous. A recent child cruelty case had a mother shut their child's mouth with a safety pin, burn them etc. We have to protect children from this type of parenting. The question is, does it benefit society or the relationship between parents and children, to extend protection to all physical punishment such as smacking? I would argue no, it would clog up the already overloaded system with marginal cases, leaving really truly horrific situations like the one I just mentioned not being investigated quickly or thoroughly. I also support the Times campaign for openness in the family courts, though, as a lot of decisions are made on 'emotional abuse' which need to be held up to the cold light of day.

[Sanah]

Interesting the talk on forced assimilation, integration.

what i notice amongst some immigrant communities is that their children - read sons in particular - run wild because they are no longer able to discipline them the way they did back home becuase of fears of social services and they don't know the 'new' methods of disciplining children. neither know them or have experience or have the patience to allow for the degree of waywardness that the non beating method allows in the child.

they fear social services either becuase they will take the child away or the child himself will go to social services and ask to be placed into care/ given his own space if he feels that he's getting curtailed too much at home.

[Peter]

Here's my theory of childhood discipline. I divide children into three populations:

A - Child never disciplined, or parents systematically use avoidance tactics rather than confronting the issues: the child becomes a selfish spoilt brat, must have all his whims fulfilled or he will scream, no respect for parents, others, or the law.

B - Child disciplined fairly and with consistency by both parents: the child learns that every action has consequences, respects his parents and others. Likely to suffer at school because politically-correct people like to put together good kids with evil kids for the sake of their social experiments.

C - Child disciplined unfairly and without consistency: the child becomes angry and resentful, believes that any authority means abuse, unlikely to have respect for anyone, might become violent.

Apart from that I totally agree with the comments made by William and Sanah.

Far from embrassing more of the Humans Rights, Cameron, if/when he becomes Prime Minister, should repeal the Human Rights Act since it protects the criminals and does nothing for the victims. But I suspect he has not the courage for that.

[whimsey]

"Allowing the government to create laws in such areas of intimacy as how we discipline our children can only serve to undermine parental authority."

Sally, what you say is truly scary. Surely you don't seriously believe a parent has the right to do what it likes with its children? What if the parent thinks it's fine to beat the kid to a pulp? Is banning that 'undermining parental authority'????

L - in a bare 50 years Britain has become a multicultural society. It has changed beyond all recognition from the 'all white' post-war culture. Fifty years is nothing in the eye of history. Does anyone imagine that the East Coast Amerindians really thought they'd be extinct within a hundred years or so, just because a handful of Europeans had arrived? And why is immigration into Europe from the ROW comparable with immigration from Europe to the ROW? Poor people seek richer lives elsewhere - it's driven human migration for ever.

Europe's full up. Time to close the doors, and look after our own - of ALL ethnicities that are here now as New Europeans along with the Old Europeans.

[Sally]

I agree with Nancy that the most powerful tool a parent has over their child is their moral (and actual) authority.

Allowing anyone else, apart from the parents, to decide the appropriate form of discipline for their children can only serve to undermine parental authority, and make enforcing rules and good behaviour more difficult.

Sometimes parents smack their children as a disciplinary measure of last resort, sometimes we do so after losing our tempers, sometimes we don't smack them at all. What we choose will depend on what we are like as individuals, on what our children are like, and on the situation, but ultimately we have to be able to decide for ourselves. After all, we know our children better than anyone else, and we love them more than anyone else.

Allowing the government to create laws in such areas of intimacy as how we discipline our children can only serve to undermine parental authority, as it brings a third party into our relationships with our children (in our minds, if not in fact) that stops us trusting our instincts and makes us worry about whether we are doing the right thing. This is no good for children as they need confident parents to draw the lines for them so that they can grow up into effective adults, having internalised the discipline that we have to impose on them whilst they are young.

[L]

Whimsey, I disagree with your assertion that there has been mass immigration into the UK from Asia and Africa. From the last census (2001, so admittedly not the most up to date), only 0.8% of the UK population is Black African and only 4% is Asian. Hardly overwhelming, is it? This is after alleged sustained immigration for a number of decades.
The situation in NZ, the US and so on at the time of colonisation is not justifiably comparable.

[whimsey]

Gosh, Gipsy,why are you so irate over this? It's most unlike you!

No, I stand by my point that the difference between integration and forced assimilation is one of degree, not essence (though obviously, in practical impact that difference in degree can be crucial).

You yourself say:

"integration is the acceptance of another (majority) society's culture/way of doing things, while at the same time keeping your own language, culture, history etc. Forced assimilation is imposed on a group by a government, and involves the stripping away of that language, history, culture whether the person wants to let go of it or not."

So if, say, as part of 'integration' with a second culture (whether host or incoming) a particular behaviour such as, say, FGM or non-consensual marriages or honour killings, are banned, how is that different from 'forced assimilation'?

If one culture does not want to give up such practices voluntarily, can't they argue that they are being forcibly assimilated (rather than voluntarily integrated) into the second culture (again, irrespective of whether it is host or incoming)?

As for whether the indigeneous population of Europe, and its native culture, is in the process of being displaced/outnumbered by non-European arrivals, well, history shows that it usually takes several hundred years for that kind of demographic/cultural shift to complete, as it did in America and, at the close of the Roman empire, in England itself.

I have to say I actually find it rather ironic that you say that there are insufficient numbers of Afro/Asian immigrants to Europe to cause concern over cultural subordination, when NZ itself probably experienced the shortest period of European immigration of all, compared even with Australia and certainly with America, which shows just how extremely fast an entire native culture can become overwhelmed and marginalised. We've only had mass Afro/Asian immigration into the UK, at least, for scarcely 50 years - and already we are noticeably multi-cultural. How will that shift if the rate of immigration and internal population growth amongst Afro/Asian people continues or even increases, over the next fifty years and more?

It seems to me to be very foolish if Europe cannot take on board the lessons of what follows when large numbers of people arrive in a territory. Our arrival imposed drastic change on host cultures and populations. Why should we think we are exempt from the reverse?

[L]

According to the 2001 census, the UK's population breakdown by religion is as follows:
- Christian (71.6%)
- Muslim (2.7%)
- No religion (15.5%)
- Not stated (7.3%)
- Other (2.9%: Jewish, Hindu, Jain etc.)

By ethnicity:
- White (92.1%)
- Indian (1.8%)
- Pakistani (1.3%)
- Bangladeshi (0.5%)
and so on.

I suppose in 2011 we will see whether or not the scare-mongering of Muslims taking over the UK will be true.

[Gipsy]

Whimsey, integration is the acceptance of another (majority) society's culture/way of doing things, while at the same time keeping your own language, culture, history etc. Forced assimilation is imposed on a group by a government, and involves the stripping away of that language, history, culture whether the person wants to let go of it or not. You've admitted yourself that you can't be bothered to look up web pages on this. I'm not about to try and have such a serious and important discussion with someone who can't be bothered to even look up basic facts. You've clearly made up your mind and made your own assumptions. I personally find it incredible that someone thinks that a very few immigrants (less than one percent of the entire population of the country is black, for example, I don't know what percentage is muslim or the percentage of immigrants is muslim but it can't be more than 1 percent) is the same as having your entire race reduced to less than a million, having a law passed in the country that was yours in the first place BANNING your own language, and being told that the government is appropriating the land you are living on even though you have a legal right to that land according to a legal document those very people signed with you. There is a very serious discussion to be had about the recent waves of immigration into this country, but it is not the same as the discussion we were having here, and frankly I personally don't want to have that discussion.