Corporal punishment of children: Changing the culture

In his populist novel, ‘The Slap’, Christos Tsiolkas describes the ramifications when a man smacks a naughty 3-year-old boy at a family barbecue. It was not his son, and the boy’s parents take the man to court. If he had smacked his own son, there would have been no scandal and no novel. The outrage provoked by the slap is not about the assault to the child but to the parents. The issue is child possession, not child protection. A recent newspaper poll reported that 93% of Australian readers thought parents should have the right to ‘reasonable chastisement’ of their own child. In 2007, in New Zealand, in response to some horrific child beatings and murders by parents, a Private Member’s bill was passed to remove a parent’s defence of having used ‘reasonable force’. Although both the intention and the reported outcome of the legislation were not to target parents who occasionally administer a gentle admonitory smack, the law divided the nation. In a 2009 referendum, 87% of New Zealanders wanted the right to smack their child reinstated. There is a long history of parents and teachers smacking and even beating children with weapons. The expression ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ is actually a misquotation of the passage in the Bible, ‘he who spares the rod hates the son’ (Proverbs 13:24). Generations of children have been beaten by their fathers with a belt or slipper or by their mothers with a wooden spoon, ‘and it never did us any harm’. The symbolism is intriguing: Dad uses the belt that shows who wears the pants or the after-work slippers, while Mum uses a kitchen implement. One hundred years ago in Sweden, severe beatings were common, but over time, Sweden has achieved a marked change in the cultural attitude to corporal punishment. In 1928, corporal punishment was banned in Swedish secondary schools (it is not banned yet in Queensland or the Northern Territory). In 1949, the wording in Sweden’s family law was changed to allow parents to ‘reprimand’ not ‘punish’ their children, but few knew about it and the impact was minimal. In 1979, the Parents’ Code was changed to state that children ‘may not be subjected to physical punishment or other injurious or humiliating treatment’. Legal sanctions, however, rested with the Penal Code, which applied only to cases that constituted assault. To increase public awareness, the new Code was printed on milk cartons and, within two years, 99% of Swedes were familiar with the law. In 1965, over half the Swedish population thought corporal punishment of children was sometimes necessary, but by 1994, only 11% did. The opposing view to a parent’s right to chastise their child as they choose is the child’s right to protection from harm. It is controversial whether changing societal attitudes to smacking children would reduce child abuse, as the pathway to child abuse is so complex and multi-factorial. In the mid-1980s, however, Sweden had less than one-third the rate of child deaths due to abuse than the USA. As a parent, societal disapproval of smacking might have saved me from two of my most painfully embarrassing memories, one when I publicly smacked my child on the leg overvigorously, and another when I smacked the same child who was grinning gloatingly at a wounded brother, only for the brother to admit he had fallen and hurt himself unaided by his sibling. Many educationalists and psychologists argue that time out is a more effective discipline than smacking, although the evidence is scant. When researching this editorial, I was surprised to find that 29 mainly European countries ban all corporal punishment of children. We have come far since Dickens’ description of pupils being tortured at Dotheboys Hall where Nicholas Nickleby taught, but the Swedish story provides compelling evidence that, with time and perseverance, it is possible to change cultural attitudes for the better, so that adults hitting children becomes a thing of the past. In his article in this issue, Kim Oates develops the argument further and argues that we as paediatricians should advocate to change perceptions and to change the law. I wholeheartedly agree.