Thursday, February 22, 2007

The Greens anti-smacking debate and bill...

Greens MP, Sue Bradford has certainly opened a can of worms with her anti-spanking bill. She is either condemned for taking parents rights away from them in disciplining their offspring, or she is congratulated for having the courage and intestinal fortitude to put the way New Zealanders discipline their children onto the political agenda and platform. Who is right?

Ms Bradfords solution to the scenario where New Zealand has been accused of being one of the most dangerous places for children, has been to put forward a bill to repeal a certain section of the Act that allows parents reasonable force to discipline their children. Its purpose has been described as sending a signal that the use of force against children is not acceptable. Its effect will be to outlaw smacking. Police will have to prosecute anybody who broke the law. No assurances can be given that it won't happen. But will the law become an ass?

There will not be a flood of prosecutions of bewildered parents to the courts, because most incidents of parents disciplining their children will be behind closed doors anyway. The occasional case of parents losing their cool in supermarkets will be just that, an isolated case. However those parents who beat their children with whips,bamboo sticks, hosepipes, pieces of wood and other articles are actually more likely to be prosecuted now that disciplining of our children has become a public debate, and rightly so!

Don't condemn Ms Bradford and the Government who may support her bill at the third reading in a few weeks time, just be grateful that our childrens interests have been considered and debated on the national stage. Just remember this, also, that it is never right or legal to assault adults in public ever, even if they are playing up and making a total pest of themselves in a supermarket or a public bar somewhere!

Finally, we have to ask ourselves the following question: Is teaching children that violence is an acceptable solution to problems in anybody's interests? Perhaps Sue Bradford's stimulated public debate has already caused many parents to personally think about their own disciplinary methods towards their own children. Ms Bradford is not an ogre or threat to society, she is a politician who has never sought physical force of any degree to discipline her own five children. Does she deserve personal threats? Of course not! Those people who have taken such a negative reaction towards their perceived right to physically discipline their children have a few issues of their own to sort out!

Incidently, the state of California and its residents are having their own particular debate about banning physical force against those children who are under three years of age!

4 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

I think that alot of people are not looking at the larger picture in this matter. I was smacked as a child. I didn't like it, but I knew at that young age that my mother and father were justified in smacking me and that I would think twice about doing whatever I did, again. I also knew that it was not okay for me to hit another child or person. I believed however that my Mum and Dad deserved my respect and as in other matters were considerate in their decisions. I do think that it is too much to use an apparatus to smack, but are we all going to regret this decision to outlaw smacking of any sort when the next generation has lost the greatlessons of respect, integrity and common courtesy. I think we only need to look at the lack of respect a majority of children show these days and at the number of ways they can now argue the point. The way they take so much for granted and believe that they are owed so much. And why? because this is the message that society gives them. The same message that those who abuse the social welfare system receive. "I haven't done anything to deserve what I am recieving but I have every right to it!" My sister inlaw was an avocate of anti smacking and using various other methods to discipline my nephew. He is a good kid but that lack of clear and easily understood boundaries has lead to his refusing to listen to the authority of his parents and elders. My sister inlaw has recently eased up and allowed smacking as a last resort as my nephew was starting to answer back and misbehave far beyond what they considered acceptable. I think it is ridiculous to think we can reason with children in the same way we do adults. Children are generally not at the same level of understanding as adults and the quickest most effective way to let them know what they have done is wrong, is a quick swat to the behind. In general children are let off with blue murder these days and their is no longer any encouragement or vigilant enforcement of respect for adults or others or respect overall. When I was a child we were aways told to wait until adults had finished serving themselves at meals as children were more likely to make a mess. Now days old ladies are left for dead while children with eyes bigger than their stomachs hoe in and load up their plates with food that they will end up leaving to go cold. My younger brother and sister were part of the generation where smacking became less popular and although my sister and most of the time my younger brother are good people, others of their generation, the mid to late teens are running amuck. Combine this with the lowering of the drinking age and I myself can now see why Courtney Place at 1:00am on Saturday and Sunday morning is a madhouse on the verge of a riot. We have learnt so many lessons in the last century about respecting others and living in harmony and freedom. But have the scales tipped so far now that we are suffering from the excesses of freedom. I feel that we are allowing the key aspects that make a great nation, society, community family unit to errode and we will end up wallowing in a pool of mediocrity and insolence.

Unknown said...

Good comments, Craig.

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