Now that childminders face a ban on striking their
charges, some argue that even parents should lose the right to smack.
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 doesn't want to give
the boy the chocolate he is demanding. She has offered blandishments
and threatened 'removal of privileges' as the childcare manuals
suggest. The boy carries on screaming, louder and louder. He
is throwing food around. As his mother starts to queue, the boy makes
a bolt 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. This week the Government will gingerly enter one of the
most sensitive national debates: who has the right to strike a child?
And who has the right to tell parents who that person should be?
By autumn the Government plans to make smacking
illegal for tens of thousands of childminders across England who look
after hundreds of thousands of young children below the age of eight.
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. And it is a significant U-turn.
The Government has been under growing pressure to
ban smacking outright. When David Blunkett was still Education
Secretary before the last election, 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.
Hitting a child is perfectly legal.
Smacking was banned in comprehensive schools in the
1980s. Private schools followed a decade later. Anti-smacking groups
argued that it was illogical not to extend the ban to all those
looking after children.
When Lord Lamming launched his inquiry into the
death of Victoria Climbié, the NSPCC submitted evidence that
Victoria's brutal treatment at the hands of Marie-Thérèse Kouao and
Karl Manning had started with a few 'slaps' to instil discipline.
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 leave
psychological as well as physical scars.
But the Government has consistently refused to move
on banning smacking for parents or childminders. These relationships
with children were private and therefore beyond the interference of
the state. '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 wishes of parents,' Blunkett said in
December 2000. As long as parents had signed agreements with
childminders that smacking was allowed, then it was not for the
Secretary of State to tell people what to do. To ban childminders from
smacking was the 'thin end of the wedge', Blunkett said, as
campaigners would then push for the final ban, on anyone hitting a
child.
'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,' Blunkett
said. 'It worked at the time. It was a last resort and 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 in 2001 Blunkett was moved to the Home Office,
and Department for Education officials, long wedded to banning
smacking at least for childminders, blew the dust off their plans.
Last Christmas rumours began around Whitehall that the Government was
again considering the issue. Charles Clarke, the present Education
Secretary, gave his assent. Baroness Cathy Ashton, the Minister with
responsibility for the welfare of young children, also backed the
move.
Now childcare organisations 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 NSPCC
official.
But such a move raises all sorts of political risks-
risks which the Government, ever aware of the sensitivities of being
tarred with the 'nanny state' brush, 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'.
Tony Blair has 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. Government officials argue that it would be
difficult to outlaw something which is such a common occurrence.
Scotland attempted to ban smacking, or hitting with
any implement, children under three years old but Scottish Ministers
abandoned the plans last February when a report by the Justice
Committee questioned the mechanics of any new legislation. 'We do not
wish to see an increase in the prosecution of parents for moderate
physical punishment,' the report said. With elections just 12 months
away, no Member of the Scottish Parliament wanted to be rowing on the
doorsteps over who could tell a parent what to do.
Banning smacking, whatever child development experts
say, is not popular. Last December a group of 40 Christian schools
tried to get the ban on corporal punishment in schools overturned on
the grounds that such punishment was 'part of the Christian heritage'.
A number of Christian and 'family' groups, including Families First
and the Christian Institute, have long campaigned against extending
the ban on smacking. Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative leader, has
made it clear he is in favour of corporal punishment.
'To be blunt, we are just not going there,' said one
Whitehall official closely involved in smacking policy when asked
whether it would be extended to parents. 'We will be very clear on
that.'
Baroness Ashton said that the ban to be announced
this week is about the professionalisation of the childminding
service, not about telling parents what to do.
Any push to extend the ban to parents would not, in
any case, be the preserve of the Department for Education. It would
have to be signed off by the Home Office. And the man in charge there
is one David Blunkett. So for the foreseeable future the mother in the
supermarket will still have 'reasonable chastisement' as her final
option.
By Kamal Ahmed
6 May 2003
http://observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,948972,00.html
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