Dan wrote:
Cymric wrote:
In the Netherlands, the Dutch Minister of Justice wanted to make it unlawful to hit a child. His argument: people should learn that it is not right to hit a child. Of course he was steamrolled by almost everyone: the law won't prevent serious child abuse (which was its main selling point), and parents should have the right to administer a corrective, educational slap. It is not a right to be taken lightly, of course, and should be avoided whereever possible.
The sad thing is that he was right.
It´s not okay to beat unknown people in the street or a shop that isn´t polite to you but it´s okay to hit your kid?
Most of what needed to be said was already put into words by many other posters---I simply forgot about this thread. I just want to comment on your reply.
First, the Minister was
not right. His goal was to prevent serious child abuse by outlawing any form of contact other than a soft touch in 'neutral' areas. People who abuse their child will not be impressed one iota, and go ahead beating the child senseless anyway. Plus it doesn't do anything about psychological abuse, nor prevent other gruesome methods of torture. If you want to hurt children, you needn't do that by hitting them. Despite the fact I don't have any children, I can understand his worries and anxieties. But he is barking up the wrong tree, and fighting symptoms instead of working on, say, improved monitoring, keeping the anonymous hot line for child abuse open (it is most likely going to be closed), and making sure that all officials have the right information to have them step in quickly and quietly when necessary.
Plus it introduces the rather curious problem what to do about children hitting other children. That's just as bad as adults hitting children. Sometimes even worse since adults are supposed to know restraint and reason, despite them being much stronger. I speak from bitter experience of being the butt-end of a number of brainless bullies for a few years. (Their bullying only ended when I kicked one in the balls, causing him to walk funny for a day or two, and really
hit another on the nose, causing a nose bleed of epic proportions. I was lucky I didn't break anything.) You want to try and get a law preventing this sort of thing through government? I give you a snowball's chance in Hell of it passing.
Or what about administering drugs like Ritalin to active and difficult children to quiet them down and make them more 'managable'? I hear it's all the fashion these days. Is that okay?
Second, there is a not-so-subtle difference between
hitting a child, and what I cryptically (and, in hindsight, rather anal-retentively) called
administering a corrective, educational slap. With the latter I mean
either a slap on the hand,
or a slap on the buttocks.
Never anywhere else, most especially the head. If you alter position, apply more force than you would apply during hand-clapping, or use anything other than an open palm, you're crossing the line. Period. That's when it becomes hitting, and people ought to seek out professional help if they did this more than once. (I think I got slapped about five times in my life, and only once in the face, but that was when I was 21 or thereabouts.)
Third, I specifically said that slapping really is a last resort. I would try peaceful methods first: moving things out of reach, taking away candy, not buying what the child wants. If that doesn't work: halting allowance, grounding them, putting them in their room, using psychological tricks. (My girlfriend told me she was once put under a cold shower, fully dressed. Harsh, but it got the job done quite effectively.) And only then, if all that fails, or if things demand immediate action, a slap. You're just as much crossing a line if you need to slap yourself out of every situation; other methods are often a lot more effective.
Finally, you really cannot compare hitting someone in the street with a slap you give a child when it's being headstrong, or throwing a temper tantrum.
That's why I have a hard time taking anyone serious who seeks to limit my (to be) paternal judgement by making the slap illegal. What's next on the list of things You Can't Do To A Child? Forbidding to send them to bed without dinner because it leads to malnutrition? Forbidding psychological tricks on ground of it hampering their mental development? No. Hitting children is Bad, but forbidding it won't solve anything, and giving a child a slap under very extreme circumstances is permissable.
