INTRUSIVE – AND A GENUINE DANGER TO LOVING FAMILIES
ADvoCATES of a ban on smacking invariably fail to think through the implications of what they are proposing. But put very simply, John Finnie’s Bill will make it a criminal offence for a parent to gently smack a naughty child.
Such an outcome would have damaging consequences for families, for society and for children at risk of significant harm.
All forms of child abuse and unreasonable punishment are already against the law. An outright ban on all forms of physical correction, no matter how mild, would therefore not give children any more protection against abusive treatment than they already have. What it would do is to subject the mildest smacks to criminal sanction.
If the Scottish parliament imposes a blanket ban on all smacking, then children from loving homes who are not at the slightest risk of abuse could be hauled before the courts to testify against their parents.
Children would risk suffering the humiliation and degradation of physical examinations and the possibility of seeing their parents dragged through the criminal justice system. The emotional damage of such an intrusion into a well-functioning home would by far outweigh the momentary discomfort of a tap on the back of the legs.
That prospect doesn’t only send a shudder down the spines of caring parents who have occasionally used a disciplinary smack. It is also deeply disturbing to many other parents who do not personally favour smacking as a disciplinary tool at all.
It is hard to think of anything more undermining of parents and more damaging to loving families. For the law to drive a wedge between children and their parents in this way presents a threat to stable family life.
But a smacking ban wouldn’t only run the risk of harm to children from stable and loving homes where their parents continued to use physical discipline in a loving and responsible way.
It would also vastly increase the caseload of social workers and deprive children suffering real abuse of the support they need. To equate a moderate smack with the kind of horrific abuse experienced by such children would only serve to obscure and trivialise their suffering.
Contrary to the claims of the abolitionists, research demonstrates that a mild smack to correct a child’s bad behaviour has a positive effect in the context of a parentchild relationship where the child is loved. Studies that have compared its effectiveness with other common methods of discipline such as grounding have found that smacking compares very favourably.
The Scottish Government claims that ‘physical punishment can have negative effects on children, which can last long after the physical pain has died away’.
But hundreds of thousands of adults will testify that the moderate physical correction they received from a loving parent has done them nothing but good.
If parents were denied the freedom to use a moderate and controlled physical sanction to nip a child’s misbehaviour in the bud, in some cases the child’s bad behaviour would deteriorate to the point at which the parents would lash out in exasperation and cause harm to the child.
IT IS a fact that the years following Sweden’s ban in 1979 saw a fivefold increase in physical child abuse cases classified as criminal assaults and a similar increase in child-on-child assaults. The evidence from other countries that have imposed smacking bans is sparse, but national reports submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child offer little to suggest that making smacking a criminal offence produces happier, better-adjusted children and contributes to harmonious family life.
In practice, a ban on smacking would be impossible to police. But it would create a climate of fear which would, in itself, be detrimental to family life.
other parents may conclude that they love their children too much to comply with such an ill-advised law and continue to use an occasional smack. But such parents would run the risk of damaging state intrusion, including court proceedings. Either way, it is the children who would lose out.
Governments don’t bring up children, parents do.