It is not long ago since our society believed that hitting a child to discipline her was necessary. When I was in very early primary school we still worried about “getting the strap”, although I think corporal punishment had been outlawed by then, but there was still a collective consciousness of “the strap” and what it entailed. Kids spoke openly at school about being smacked, hit with the wooden spoon or hit with the belt.
However, community attitudes have changed greatly over 30 or so years. The Herald Sun recently ran a story about a woman who was contacted by police after her daughter disclosed that she had been hit with the wooden spoon by her mother in the past:
…[O]fficers warned Claire Davidson she risked being charged with “assault with a weapon” after her daughter revealed during a classroom discussion on bullying that her mum smacked her.
A shocked Ms Davidson told the Herald Sun a support worker from Yea Primary School reported her to police.
“I was told it was assault with a weapon to hit her with a wooden spoon on the bum,” Ms Davidson said.
And in April this year, a child was removed from the custody of her father after he hit her with a belt four times. The daughter had stolen money. The father was also fined $1000.
Larvatus Prodeo recently had a post citing a study by Murray Straus and Mallie Paschall which found that smacking impairs cognitive development. It is important to bear in mind that cognitive stimulation was the most important predictor of cognitive development. However, the results tended to show that children who were regularly smacked had lower IQs than those who were not. The worst-off group, of course, was the group who were smacked and were not provided with cognitive stimulation from their parents. I have to say that I was rather shocked by the statistics contained in the study:
The figures revealed that 93 per cent of mothers had spanked 2- to 4-year-olds once or more per week, whereas only 58 per cent had turned to physical discipline with the older kids. Nearly half of toddlers’ moms had spanked their children three or more times per week, Straus and Paschall found.
It is interesting to note that by contrast with the cases above (and consistently with the high figures in the study) in the surveys undertaken by the New Limited papers, the public vote in favour of allowing smacking of children ranged from 92% in some states to 95% in others. The poll simply asked, “Should parents be allowed to smack their children?”
I’d criticise the poll because “smack” was not defined. Does “smack” mean a sharp whack on the backside with an open palm, or does it mean hit repeatedly around the face, for example? I’d say that smacking is not the best way of disciplining a child, but a single smack on the bottom in some rare circumstances may be understandable. On the other hand, hitting a child with an implement, repeatedly smacking a child or hitting a child in the face is unacceptable. Personally, my main method of discipline is to make my daughter sit in the “naughty laundry”. It works far better than anything else. My opinion mirrors that of child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg:
Child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg said time-out and rewarding good behaviour was the best discipline method.
He said in some incidents, such as if a child ran across a road, a sharp smack on the bottom was justified.
“An impulsive smack on the bum is not going to traumatise a child,” Dr Carr-Gregg said.
“I prefer parents not to do it but I am not going to criminalise them for doing it.”
He said parents should never use an implement to hit a child or hit a child over the head.
In some other cultures, it is still quite acceptable to discipline a child by smacking, beating or belting. A friend of mine tells of parent-teacher interviews where, upon being told that their child was very badly behaved in class, parents said to the teacher, “You hit ‘im. You hit ‘im with big stick if he is bad.” When the teacher said that she wasn’t able to do that, the parents expressed disbelief.
All these issues come to the fore with a recent incident involving a Chinese couple who now risk being deported after beating their son:
A Victorian couple seeking permanent residency in Australia fear possible deportation to China after admitting tying up their 11-year-old son and beating him with tree branches.
The parents, who also stuffed socks into the boy’s mouth as a gag, caused cuts and lacerations, mostly to his legs, arms and hands.
Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday heard the beatings followed the boy’s alleged misbehaviour last year at a school open day for prospective students.
The court was told the parents, who cannot speak English, made full admissions to police and gave an explanation or excuse that they were ”unaware they could not do what they did in Australia”.
I don’t think anti-smacking laws, such as those in New Zealand, are warranted. For one thing, I’d say that they would not be in keeping with public sentiment if the News Limited polls are any indication. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” It’s always difficult to enforce laws when the public does not believe that they are necessary. It makes it far more likely that the law will simply fail in practice.
The problem with smacking is that it’s really hard to draw distinctions. From my point of view, what these parents did to the boy who was tied to the tree is absolutely abhorrent. And then there’s the cases of child abuse where kids are killed (often by the mother’s de facto partner who is unrelated to the child). All these kinds of behaviours are criminal, and should be stopped.
On the other hand, if I saw a mother deliver a small smack to her child’s bottom in the supermarket, I wouldn’t report her to child services or say anything. That’s her business, and while it’s not ideal, no one is a perfect parent. Sometimes it’s hard when you’re tired, fed-up and your kid is misbehaving when you’re out and about.
I don’t know where the line should be drawn, or if it’s even appropriate to have a bright line. I think it’s very much a matter that each case should be judged on its own facts.
21 Comments
Did it occur to anybody running that cognitive development study that children with lower IQs or lower levels of cognitive stimulation are more likely to exhibit the kind of behavioural problems that mean parents were more likely to physically discipline them?
Steve’s rule of education:
“One hit equals a Thousand Words”
And in the study did they factor in the IQ of the parents? To the extent that intelligence is hereditary, lower IQ parents may be more likely to smack their children. If for no other reason then they’ve never had higher education and been exposed to the new anti-smacking morality…
I think everyone (educated, middle class everyone, anyway) thinks smacking may well have been overused in the past, but it is an essential tool in child-rearing.
I took great (if hidden) amusement from my evangelical anti-smacking sister’s recent tortured confession that she has started to resort to a smack on rare occasions. And I reckon anyone who has kids and hasn’t had to sooner or later is very lucky indeed.
Deus Ex –
Yes of course it occurred to the researchers, and they went to considerable lengths to try and separate out what caused what. As they say, read the whole thing.
When my son was 4 weeks old, my then-almost-three-year-old daughter was behaving appallingly, and threw a tantrum where she was actually physically endangering herself. I was tired, still sore from childbirth, getting over mastitis… I confess I gave her a small smack which brought her up sharply and stopped her from endangering herself. Then I called the Maternal Child helpline, crying because I’d smacked my child, and I’d always sworn not to. The woman on the other end of the line listened sympathetically, and then said, “Sounds like your daughter thoroughly deserved it; don’t worry so much.”
Laws against smacking strike me as being of similar type to laws against oral sex or homosexuality. Honoured only in the breach, not the observance. This isn’t a question of where the state should or should not go; it’s a question of where the state can or cannot go.
Isn’t it simply better to let the legal system decide through case law rather than have an outright ban? Clearly what the Chinese parents did to that kid was assault.
The only time I’ve whacked one of my kids was when s/he was running across a busy road when the idea of a decent whack was almost redundant as s/he was a few seconds away from being turned into a pancake.
I don’t believe that study. IQ is hereditary for the most past.. Kids “raised”/survived in the squalor of the concentration camps still ended up receiving Nobels and becoming leaders in their field.
As an aside:
Interesting how the LP sect are using IQ tests etc to somehow suggest smacking equals low cognitive ability as I thought at one stage they were saying IQ testing etc. isn’t an effective measuring tool, but I guess in this instance it is.
I did read it, DD. And I found this… (bolding is mine)
So they acknowledge the existence of a relationship but decide to ignore it in favour of their pet hypothesis. Major problems also in obvious bias – the idea that CP rates are higher because of parental failings (resentment and frustration) rather than the possibility that lower cognitive development can be linked to more dangerous or violent behaviours being exhibited by children requiring (and justifying) higher levels of parental intervention including corporal punishment.
Contrary to your statement that “they went to considerable lengths to try and separate out what caused what” no attempt has been made to measure an effect that might undermine their hypothesis whatsoever.
Plenty of other problems. The analysis was based on a study that deliberately oversampled women from low-income and minority groups, no effort was made to IQ test the mothers and the effects of fathers (other than presence) was ignored despite it being likely that fathers would be likely to have also “had a hand”, so to speak, in CP in the older set of children (mothers were only asked if they had smacked the child in that sample week).
“IQ is hereditary for the most past”
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That’s pretty debatable JC. At least early in life there are reasonable environmental influences (although these influences seem to get washed out a lot in old age).
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“Major problems also in obvious bias”
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I think I was one of the few people arguing that was a good paper in that thread (I certainly would have let it through an average journal). I think most people fail to understand the following:
1) You can’t measure everything (people simply get sick of filling stuff in, people lie, etc.)
2) You can never run perfect studies on this type of issue (studies with children on contentious topics that occur in the home arn’t studies in economics)
3) Even if something is confounded it doesn’t matter if the effect size is likely to be small
4) You need to take the data together with other studies (because of (1))
5) There’s huge evidence that smacking does do stuff to kids — but people have mainly looked at social learning
6) There are certainly better papers that provide meta-analyses of many studies.
7) The actual data in that paper is pretty strong. If you look at the question in reverse, it seems reasonable that IQ would never predict the huge differences in the amount of smacking. Thus even if there are confounding factors, they’re likely to be minor.
Absolutely. It’s too difficult an issue to be sorted out with some kind of blanket law “banning” smacking.
Random musings: the intention of discipline is to teach a child the difference between right and wrong.
I’d suggest one reason why younger kids were hit more in this study is because you can’t easily communicate with them verbally.
But it might be that if you just hit the kid and don’t explain why what they did was wrong, the kid gets stressed, but doesn’t learn as well as a kid who is disciplined in a way which teaches them why what they did was wrong.
Obviously there’s limits to reasoning with a very young child over bad behaviour. My parents tell a funny story about some friends of theirs who were older parents with a toddler. The friends were holding a dinner party, and the father carefully explained to the toddler that he’d get three stories and then he’d go to sleep. Junior solemnly promised that this was the deal. The father read three stories, everyone settled down to eat…
Then out came Junior. “But you promised you’d go to sleep!” said the father in shocked tones. My mother’s thought was, Don’t make a contract with a toddler. They don’t keep their promises.
It can work, you just need to require payment in advance
Smacking children models violence that children then reflect. Two related anecdotes:
- My wife wound down smacking my oldest daughter’s on the hand when she found her habitually ‘punishing’ her younger toddler sister in the same way.
- The most violent children in my kids primary school were the most tightly disciplined and troubl free at home(and I suspect by CP).
David P, I think it can work either way – if your parents hit you violently, you might hit others (as you’ve been taught that’s the way to respond), or you might decide you never want to inflict that on anyone else. Someone I know is a teetotaller because her father drank heavily – sometimes you end up doing the opposite of what your parents did.
I believe that if parents are not able to discipline their children in a reasonable, sometimes physical but caring way for the child’s own good, then what are the odds that the child will become uncontrollable and think they can do anything they like? Parents are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. A good whack never hurt any child particularly when the child is of an age when they do not understand the message any other way. You can’t reason with small children, they don’t get it, they are not adults.
The IQ of the parents or the child should not be brought into this either. Does anyone seriously believe that highly intelligent people do not hit their children, sometimes with force? I really have a problem when people are categorised in this manner, suggesting that people of lower intelligence love and care for their children less. That is so condescending.
Hello Everyone,
I have read the various posts and do find each has a point of view.
I grew up in an orphanage when children were treated as objects to be used as and when. You were frequently physically abused/brutalised.
I do not consider the treatment effected my intelligence development. I left the orphanage; educated myself through studies; built a farm on the irrigation and became a farmer; and then studied engineering and owned an engineering business. Later owned and ran a manufacturing company; was a business consultant and later became a consultant to the government, therefore I consider that proves a level of intelligence and cognitive ability.
I now work as a volunteer community advocate on behalf of the most vulnerable in our society and have often been frustrated and horrified by Australian laws in this area. One of my interest groups is disabled children and also the lack of, or limited support given to the parents
Ok. Having done a PR exercise on myself. I needed to do that to prove a point so forgive me.
Many researchers set the parameters too narrow and these tend to lead to re-conceived outcomes and not necessarily all of the truth.
Firstly I would be arguing what constitutes intelligence of (a) the parents, (b) the children, (c) what is the socio-economic background (d) what is smacking. A sharp smack with the hand to draw the child’s attention or to break into a child’s concentration on a tantrum it is using too manipulate the parent; or compared the level of smacking that is basically brutality and the person using it also loses control.
I am not an advocate of smacking. My own children “suffered”? more from time out or loss of privileges.
I have just spent more than two days trying to get child protection, including potential abduction overseas for some disabled children. The mother has tried every avenue to get protection but was told that she faced having the children taken from her by the court that would construe her complaints against the father as malicious and vindictive action to stop the father’s access to his children. She was told she had no evidence, except for what the children told her and they were too young to understand the implications of what they were saying. Children lie, etc, etc.
When the youngest was taken to the train and recognized the road he got upset saying “no go train, n go train. When the family reached the point of handover the father dragged the child kicking and screaming not to go.
The middle child told her father she was not going and the father screamed and yelled that she was going and had no choice. The oldest child said she would go so she could protect her little bother.
And law and bureaucracy say these children do not understand. What a joke.
If it happened once then you might agree but when it happens every visit then in my mind there is no question the children understand.
I knew when I was belted in the orphanage that I did not like it happening and I certainly would have loved to run away but the punishment was so bad this option was seldom used. I can still remember being belted for 2 ½ hours for daring to complain of my treatment. Children do know and understand.
Australian systems are so far behind the rest of the world.
In Britain the prime concern is the protection of the children. Here it is to protect the rights of both parents to have access and contact with their children, a concept I do not necessarily disagree but not when it impacts on the safety, welfare and development of the children.
In this case above the children have a very loving and caring environment with the mother totally devoted to her children? As they are disabled she is on duty 24/7 and without support and she is not alone as my advocacy takes me into contact with many of these parents.
The mother rang Immigration, Federal Police and Child Protection, so she has taken every possible step to protect her children with no success. The excuse ranges from a straight NO! To a comment –as long as the children are not in danger the bureaucracy will do nothing.
The children rang Children’s Helpline, only to be told to ring back after the school holidays.
The told their teacher, nothing was done
They told their doctor and the doctor said he had not evidence to report.
As she had exhausted all avenues I said I would try my contacts. She said I would get the same answers and because she had complained they would turn on her and try and make her the one breaking the law.
I contacted the local offices and noted the responses and then contacted the head offices. The responses did not differ markedly although it was agreed to take it to the court.
However, to get any action it required the mother to break the orders and throw it back to the father. That is what she feared but I said that as she had cared and looked after the children birth and the father had contributed nothing and had even constantly broke orders from 2003, it was my believe that with the danger of abduction the court would view it sympathetically. The Court had imposed Child Alert watch and passport protection when the father attempted to abduct them so his history of behaviour was no a very good one.
This particular case is a sad one and very complex, with more involved. It does demonstrate that although Australia gives lip service to child protection it fails and fails miserably. In fact as has been mentioned in the media bureaucracy and government have behaved criminally in my opinion.
The reason I have responded is to state that research has to look at the whole picture and not make assumptions based on limited data. I also conclude that there needs to be a community education program to show people that behaviour patterns shown by some children are a result of their disability, not bad parenting or bad discipline practice.
I could go on and on and in fact have been asked why I do not write a book on some of the experiences. A good idea but I am afraid I do not have the time and can only continue to speak out.
Regards
professori_au
John, that is a fascinating comment; it really does deserve a detailed response but right now I am flat chat. Maybe LE will be along in due course.
LE: “And then there’s the cases of child abuse where kids are killed (often by the mother’s de facto partner who is unrelated to the child). ”
And then there’s the cases of child abuse where kids are killed (often by the mother who gave birth to the child).
LE – criminal case facts show a child is just as likely to be abused / killed by their mother as their father or “other” parent. Please don’t perpetuate the myth that males as the dominant force in child abuse.
I don’t care who does it – it is despicable and what I’d like to see happen to them is not fit for posting.
Back to smacking – It takes a lot more time, energy and willpower to discipline children without smacking. Smacking is the lazy way out. I have found a child even as young as 1 yr old can be told if what s/he is doing is wrong or right. They get the message loud and clear.
It is not easy, and stopping yourself raising your voice / keeping anger out, is something I find extremely challenging as well.
re new laws on shared parenting – how many males suicided due to being denied contact? I would hate to see kids traumatised by being “forced” into contact – this is one area where the Court has long struggled to figure out what is best.
What I’d like considered is for there to be a ban on any Court action over contact for the first year post separation unless a child is in danger or contact wholly denied. Give the parents a year to get over their relationship while maintaining as much status quo for the children as possible.
I spent a few years in this area and it was enough. Too many heart breaking stories.
But I did manage to help get a child back from Italy, so that was pretty cool, especially as the mum who took off was a nutcase who eventually ended up with supervised contact until she could sort herself out.
I’m beginning to feel that to smack or not to smack a child is a government smoke screen to get everyone arguing. The real reason is to pass one more petty law that will restrict the way we live our lives. A raft of people will be given the power to report us to the police which wil lead to fines and/or jail sentences and being registered as a criminal.
FWIW Maxine, I largely agree with you, and as I mentioned above I think this is asking too much of the law (the law has limits; this is a very basic means/end or practical limit). There are things we can do make the situation easier (one can build a pretty strong case that we provide far too many incentives to people who are cognitively underpowered to breed), but that apart, policing laws like this is not possible.
Hi All,
I did not intend to write tonight but JC’s comment, despite its qualifying words “most part” ……. IQ is hereditary for the most past leads me to respond.
I am not a supporter of many studies as in my experience the parametres and methodology are narrow or corrupt.
My response tonight tells a story, explaining why I treat much research or comments with caution until I have all of the data.
It refers to a study done in, I think, the 1940′s or 50′s. It was an IQ study done of children from an American city. The study group comprised equally of white and Negro children.
The result was that the whites came out with superior IQ figures and the Negro children very poorly.
It is a credit to the intelligence of the researcher undertaking the study that when completed he gave the results some thought, finding he was uncomfortable about the outcome, so decided to do another one.
This time he looked at the socio-economic backgrounds of the children and then built the test around someone with the Negro background.
Result? The whites failed miserably, if anything gave a poorer result that the Negros previously.
This demonstrates just how careful we need to be when setting up the parameters, etc of research.
This research proved to me that IQ is not a result of genes and while it might have some influence the greater influence can be the socio-economic circumstances.
The both groups performed in accordance with their understanding of the level of education, language, grammar, local dialects as well. These are just a few reasons why such a test would not be accurate.
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I said in earlier comments, I stated that one of the areas that takes my interest as a community advocate, are children, specifically disabled children.
I remember one case of an autistic child who also had a communication problem caused by his being born partially deaf. When he was a baby (between 0 -5.5), he would go into “meltdown” when no one could understand what he was trying to communicate.
A sole parent, she had to take this child shopping with her as there was no support or child minding, so she was frequently faced with “tutting” disapproval glances from those who considered her a bad parent.
The mother frequently was approached by “do gooders” and informed the mother she needed to discipline her child better. A good smack on the backside would teach him to behave himself.
Would it? You are autistic and almost deaf. I would think that all of us would misbehave in such a situation.
His autism was such that mentally he spaced out when taken from his home (comfort zone). Take for example a visit to a super market. What is there that would freak such a child?
To understand the problems of an autistic child would take some time and not needed here, except to point out one of the problems that can be part of the condition and that is that there brain can going into overload as it tries to interpret all that is going around, e.g. colour, space, noise shapes, immense corridors (shelving) filled with all sorts of objects. To top it off there are giants (average people) towering over the child plus music that is not necessarily quietening to such a child. Wow!
Even coming to the store there is a busy highway with monstrous trucks and cars.
Need I go on?
I will.
Taking the child shopping could turn into an hour or two ordeals when it could have taken only a few minutes to get to the supermarket. The child would be kicking and screaming wanting to go home. Put his feet into the wheels of the pram, until we were able to get her one of those “jogger three wheeler prams. Later she could take him walking with her, as long as something did not happen to child his routine when he was going and she had him on a lead, e.g. an owner of one house on the way decided to pull the old brick fence down. This upset the child and he went into “meltdown”.
This paragraph only explains walking to the shop. Doing the shop came next and then there was the trip home with the groceries as well. Many times the mother has had to leave the shop and come home because of the way people behaved to her. I would advise people be careful before you are critical and until you have fitted yourself into the shoes of parents like this and walked their mile.
As an advocate I tried to negotiate to get government support to have the kiddy’s hearing fixed, only to be told that there were thousands of other Australian children on waiting lists, so why should the government give preferential treatment. Let him go on the waiting list. It was not until he was one year from commencing primary school that he was given a final conclusive diagnosis and the government found he was a disabled child. Well that changed things. The government assisted disabled children from all over the world, do of course it could help.
Why am I so cynical when dealing with government bureaucrats?
This child had to then learn to speak and communicate his needs, plus also understand others. You can imagine the damage that has been done to his development at such a critical age.
He is coming along well now, although is subject to meltdowns still but not so frequently. I doubt he will ever pick up the lost time as he does have some intellectual problems. His progress develops mainly form rote learning and a rigid routine. He goes to a special school now and I can say it has done wonders for him. The role of such a school is to try and prepare him to live on his own as an adult. Whether that will be fully achieved no one knows but every skill he learn allows him to live quieter and with less stress. Often as we might curse them computers and video type games have done a good job with his development.
Australian governments, bureaucrats and policy developers have failed the Australian people and especially those who are frail, ill, disabled right through all age brackets. Our legal, health and medical systems are a disaster and far behind most European countries and need I say some developing third world countries.
Well I had better stop here before I go into other tangents.
Good night all sleep tight
Professori_au