Child Discipline: Here We Go Again

It seems at least once a year the social engineers come out of the woodwork and demand that parents no longer be able to discipline their own children. They want to turn every rap on the hand or backside into a criminal offence, and turn millions of wonderful and conscientious parents into criminals overnight.

I have written on this so often now, for the simple reason that this keeps raising its ugly head. The experts (many of whom likely do not even have any kids of their own) keep coming back to this even though the overwhelming majority of parents totally reject this heavy-handed call.

Whenever polls and surveys are taken on this, parents insist on their fundamental right to be able to discipline their children, and not have the nanny state come in and tell them how to parent. And of course we already have laws on the books outlawing clear child abuse.

Loving smacks on the bottom done in love and as a last resort have nothing whatsoever to do with real child abuse. Yet our eggheads can’t seem to make this simple distinction. So once again we have to have this debate, even though we have been through it all before.

This time it is a doctors’ group – or just some of those within the group more likely – who want to ban smacking. Here is how one news item reports this: “In Australia it is legal for parents to use corporal punishment to discipline children as long as the punishment is ‘reasonable’ in the circumstances.

“A leading group of doctors is pushing to make it a criminal offence for parents to smack their children. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians will call for the legal amendment on Friday to give children the same protection from assault as other community members.

“President of the college’s paediatrics and child health division Associate Professor Susan Moloney said physical punishment could escalate to abuse. ‘We know that a significant number of child homicides are a result of physical punishment which went wrong,’ she said. ‘It started off as physical punishment and went too far’.”

Actually the research points in the opposite direction: usually child abuse does not decrease, but in fact can go up in those countries which ban smacking. But I have documented this elsewhere, eg.: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2007/04/10/parental-rights-vs-the-nanny-state/

So instead of repeating myself here, let me just point out what has happened in New Zealand where smacking was outlawed in 2009. Bob McCoskrie of Family First NZ has just put out this helpful media release which is worth sharing here:

A family group in New Zealand is warning Australian parents to reject any proposed ban on smacking, saying that from experience, it will do more harm than good, will have no effect on child abuse rates, but will criminalise good parents raising great kids.

“The rates of child abuse deaths in New Zealand have stayed at the same rate as they were before the anti-smacking law was passed. The ban has targeted good parents, rather than the rotten parents who are abusing their children, and has wasted valuable time <http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/131429/select-committee-hears-cyf-getting-too-many-referrals> and resources of the police and social agencies,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “Any claims that a ban on smacking will lower child abuse rates are simply ‘hot air’.”

A recent survey <http://familyfirst.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ANTI-SMACKING-LAW-2013-POLL.pdf> of 1,000 NZ’ers found that only 12% of respondents think the law change has had any effect on the rate of child abuse. The survey also found that three out of four people back a law change to allow “correctional” smacking of children. And two out of three respondents said they would flout the law and smack their child to correct their behaviour if they thought it was reasonable to do so.

Another survey <http://www.familyfirst.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Smacking-Poll-Mar-2011-FULL-REPORT.pdf> in 2011 found that almost a third of parents of younger children say that their children have threatened to report them if they were smacked. And almost one in four of parents of younger children say that they have less confidence when dealing with unacceptable behavior from their children since the anti-smacking law was passed.

“The latest review <http://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/resources/other-reports/11th-review-section-59.pdf> of police activity related to the anti-smacking law continues to show disturbing trends, and reveals that almost 600 kiwi families have had a police investigation for allegations of smacking or minor acts of physical discipline since the anti-smacking law was passed yet only 9% of them have been serious enough to warrant charges being laid.”

“In the meantime, cases of actual child abuse have increased by a third in the past 5 years,” says Mr McCoskrie.

Quite so. We don’t need Big Brother doing more snooping in our homes. We need to empower parents to do what they do best: love, parent and discipline their own children without the heavy hand of an ever-increasing state encroaching upon their rightful territory.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/outlawing-the-smack-20130725-2qnl5.html
http://familyfirst.org.nz/2013/07/warning-to-oz-smacking-ban-more-harm-than-good/

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19 Replies to “Child Discipline: Here We Go Again”

  1. Oh lightbulb moment, could this be a motive by the population control mob? I’m asking this and I’m your pro-life leftie friend, afterall it will put off heaps of people from wanting kids.

    Tara Kelly

  2. Yes Tara it is certainly all about statism and Big Brother government gaining even more control over every area of life, including the family. Indeed, the cultural Marxists have always hated the family, and want to have direct access to our children. So plenty of ulterior motives here going on.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  3. When I first posted it, it didn’t register with me about the population control but it makes sense, hectic week. Time for another drink!!!

    Tara Kelly

  4. Amen, Bill.

    You can be confident that a majority of doctors do not support this kind of totalitarian Government intrusion into peoples’ private lives. It is inevitably a small group of ivory-tower idealogues and activists who get control of the bureaucratic apparatus and abuse their position of respect by promoting these foolish and extreme agendas. And the main motives behind it is not protecting children, as claimed, but waging the culture wars against the churches and traditional ideas of family that are loathed by the Left.

    Jereth Kok

  5. I guess the irony is lost on them; they want to smack parents with the heavy hand of the law to stop parents from smacking their children.

    Simon Fox

  6. Yes quite right Simon. Even more ironic is the fact that the great bulk of those calling to criminalise parents and prevent them from disciplining their children are lefty trendies who fully support the right of parents to kill their own children in the womb.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  7. Another attack on heterosexuality and the traditional family today throughout the Australian media today – it would be interesting to know where these talking points come from – It was everywhere – 2GB – 2UE – Sunrise – ABC and so on – but no talk Gay Parents owning children should be outlawed… no that is sacred. Only heterosexuals hurt children is all we ever usually hear in the media. Look at my comments on truthnews com au about it (included below) and how they exposed it last week – I did the research and they just discussed it. This is the video ABC and channel 7 doesn’t want you to see. Proof that rainbow family gay dads enable mass rape for 10-15% of all paedophiles who no longer have to steal children now they can buy them and take them around the world to all the 70,000 boylovers net members, as we have seen happen already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrR9MY6GdM on my hojuruku youtube channel.

    I’m doing lots of interviews about the gay lobby’s agenda to force gay marriage in mosques and churches which is tantamount to state sponsored extreme case of religious persecution. http://tinyurl.com/vinnyeastwoodshow for more information on that and Alex Greenwich MP’s proposed bill.

    There is more to this ABC promoting and protecting gay paedophilia than what we first thought. Look at this new evidence!

    To Robert Stacy McCain (US Blogger @rsmccain)
    CC: 1 decent Australian independent Politician, my dad, and a Russian advocate that *may* be informing his local journalists of developments.

    I take it you have seen my earlier emails about her asking for credit for putting that uncensored Russian (Stan) the pedo victim as a poster for 100’s of gay dads activism websites who haven’t got the memo yet.
    http://www.twitpic.com/d3lkbf

    And you may also not be aware of change.org trying to end diplomatic ties with Russia, because they have cut off the supply of Caucasian looking babies to the boylovers dot net

    http://www.twitpic.com/d4bsoo

    But this one is a total classic.

    http://www.pozible.com/project/28557
    She’s chatting to two gay dads asking for funding to write a book about how wonderful it is to have a baby boy they bought….

    See her conversation with them here.

    https://twitter.com/RipnRoll_guys/status/355075355482136576

    Look up all the tweets it’s pretty disturbing. They call their boy a little bugger. Buggery used to mean anal rape if you pull out your Oxford dictionary.
    And the guy has never wrote a book in his life. “aspiring author”. It’s pretty sick eh?

    Also look at the most popular video on my youtube.com/hojuruku channel. It plugs your fine blog.

    Cheers,

    Luke McKee

    By hojuruku on 2013 07 25 – 16:14:38

  8. The debate on smacking is not really about the welfare of the children anyway, it is about driving a wedge between children and parents because unruly and clever children can threaten their parents. This is social marxism and is the kind of thing employed by the Hilter Youth, which my parents were forced to be in.
    I also love the faulty logic they employ – if smacking were ‘violence’ as they claim, driving at 5km/hr (vs 200km/hr) must also be speeding.

    Mark Rabich

  9. I’m sure that a love tap on an unruly child’s back side would go a long way to checking bad behavior. How often do you see some children acting up badly with their mothers in shopping centers, knowing that there wont be consequences for their actions. Those mums then are trying valiantly to portray an appearance of calm but you get the feeling all the same that mum is probably saying under her breath “just wait till I get you home” That’s just where her pent up anger will explode into the child getting punished many times more than it would have if mum could have given the child a love tap at the time of miss behaving.

    Michael Mercier

  10. You can’t spank your child outside the womb, but you can dismember and decapitate him inside the womb. Go figure.

    Anna von Marburg

  11. The right to spank is always something that can be abused. However, the solution is not to outlaw the practice. As it stands ATM in Victoria it is legal under the common law:
    “[T]here are exceedingly strict limits to that right [to use reasonable force on a child]. In the first place, the punishment must be moderate and reasonable. In the second place, it must have a proper relation to the age, physique and mentality of the child, and in the third place, it must be carried out with a reasonable means or instrument.”
    R v Terry [1995] VLR 114 (Sholl J), 116

    Incidentally I came across this today while brushing up on my old law studies.

    Regards,

    Cameron Spink
    RESISTANCE THINKING CO-ORDINATOR

  12. I have nothing but utter contempt for these bozos! They belong in the circus. My 3 boys got 2 warnings and then a good smack on the backside or sometimes, on the legs, never above the waste or around the head. That was mixed with a very generous helping of verbal and physical love, they always got told why they got a good clout and as a result, I have 3 wonderful grown up young men, its funny you know, but when we are overrun by out of control brats and the parents are beside themselves you can bet that the morons who suggest all this nonsense will be nowhere to be seen, very dangerous people indeed!

    Steve Davis

  13. Hi Michael,

    I believe it would have its “ordinary meaning”.
    That is to say, the “means or instrument” is the method used to deal out the punishment. Thus, a baseball bat is not going to be viewed by the court as being an appropriate tool to discipline with. It is difficult to see whether a court would even consider a wooden spoon permissible. But, going off this precedent, it is all about circumstance.

    Regards,

    Cameron Spink
    RESISTANCE THINKING CO-ORDINATOR

  14. Even the police are used to the idea of a difference between reasonable and excessive force in dealing with criminals. Permissible corporal punishment of children should not entail causing our sons and daughters grievous bodily harm through what the law calls “cruel and unusual punishment.
    John Wigg

  15. Most certainly John and herein lies the difficulty. Many people will abuse this grey area and punish in malicious and emotional way. Punishment should always be for the benefit of the child performed by a person completely in control of their faculties. In such instances corporal punishment should continue to be legal.

    Regards,

    Cameron Spink
    RESISTANCE THINKING CO-ORDINATOR

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