Wednesday 16 April 2008
Senior Labour MPs have recently renewed attempts to 'outlaw' the smacking of children. Backbenchers, including the health select committee chairman and a former whip, hope to force an amendment to the Children and Young Persons Bill, going before Parliament this month, to give children 'the same legal protection from assault as adults'.
This move is being made in response to the Government's recent review of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 which concluded that the law on smacking children should remain as it stands currently 'in the absence of evidence it is not working satisfactorily'.
As the law stands currently, children are protected from battery 'which is justified on the ground that it constituted reasonable punishment'. In effect, it is already illegal for parents to smack their children unless this constitutes only "mild smacking" — i.e. a smack which does not cause bruises, swelling, leave a graze, scratch or cut, and does not cause mental harm.
Critics of the law say the reasonable punishment defence creates a grey area ('the Government says it's OK to hit your child') and that any smacking of children should be classed as assault. Its proponents, meanwhile, argue that 'caring' parents who employ controlled and appropriate methods of physical discipline should not be criminalised.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) commissioned us to survey parents in summer 2007 as part of its review of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 (in order to examine its practical effect and to revisit views on smacking). The government considered several sources of evidence as part of the review: the findings from this survey of parents, those from qualitative research with around 60 children and young people aged 4-16 (undertaken by Sherbert), responses to a public consultation, and interviews with legal professionals including the police and Crown Prosecution Service.
The key objective of the present research was to establish an up-to-date, robust and neutral 'baseline' measurement of the views of parents and carers on the physical punishment of children, against which any subsequent shift in opinion over time can be safely measured.
When we analysed the survey findings, parents in our sample were divided into two types: 'current' parents (those with at least one child under the age of 18 at the time of interview) and 'ever' parents (those with children aged 18+), and who therefore tend to be older themselves.
Overall, around half of all parents (52%) agree that 'it is sometimes necessary to smack a naughty child', but 'ever' parents are more likely than 'current' parents to say this (66% compared to 46%).
This appears to represent a significant shift in public opinion on smacking in the course of the last 10 years: around nine in ten people (88%) agreed and one in ten (8%) disagreed with the same statement in a 1998 ONS survey. Although the results from the two studies are not directly comparable (the ONS sample consisted of all adults, not exclusively parents, and the question wording and methodology were different) this gives some indication that public opinion is moving to a 'no smacking' position.
On the contentious issue of whether there should be an outright ban on smacking, a majority of parents (67%) disagree that there should be a complete ban on parents hitting their children, even a smack as a punishment, and 59% agree that the law should allow parents to smack their children. Again though older 'ever' parents are more likely to agree than 'current' parents (69% and 55% respectively).
Based on these research findings, we anticipate that smacking children will become increasingly rare over time, effectively negating the need to distinguish in law between 'reasonable punishment' and violence constituting assault. Already, younger, 'current' parents more frequently say they use 'positive' parenting techniques (such as praising — and rewarding — good behaviour, reasoning with them and stopping their children from doing something they like to do) to manage their children's behaviour than smack them. Resorting to the Supernanny-endorsed "time out/sitting on the naughty step" method, rather than a physical 'short, sharp shock', is unlikely to be a passing fad.