To say that English parents are uniquely keen on hitting their kids wouldn’t be fair – even on a day when the Welsh government’s announcement that it aims to outlaw corporal punishment leaves England looking isolated. What can be said with confidence is that English parents, and the MPs who represent them, appear unusually determined to hold on to the legal right to “smack” their offspring.
I say “smack” because that is the term most often used, though whether these blows or slaps are really distinguishable from others is a moot point. Certainly most smacks aren’t issued as formal penalties, as used to happen in schools or households in which discipline was a matter of “Wait till your dad gets home”. Currently the UK is one of just two countries in the EU (the other is the Czech Republic) neither to have banned corporal punishment, nor to be considering a ban.
One survey by the NSPCC reported almost half of British parents of children aged between 11 and 17 as saying they had smacked them, but the lack of international research makes comparisons difficult. In one of the few surveys of families across Europe, 70% of French parents said they had slapped a child’s face, while just 8% claimed to be raising children without any violence.
It is widely agreed that corporal punishment is becoming less common in the UK, as it is in most places. But the idea that British parents should be allowed to change at our own pace, and not be threatened with sanctions, is tenacious.
The problem for politicians, when faced with the prospect of tabloid ire about a ban, is that the law matters. This is partly practical. Changing laws alters behaviour much more dramatically than any amount of nudging or peer pressure, though public education is important. But law is also a matter of principle. Bruce Adamson, the children’s commissioner for Scotland (where the government has thrown its weight behind a ban), is a lawyer who believes the human rights case for “equal protection” from violence can no longer be ignored with regard to children. Just how strange it is that British children don’t currently have the same protection as adults takes a bit of thinking about.
Illustration: Mark Long