Parliament Knows Best?

The debate about smacking children is unusual because it is one – the only one? - where Parliamentarians think that they know better than the experts. If there were a debate about nuclear physics or brain surgery, the evidence of the experts in the field would be acknowledged, and if it were united, it would probably be unchallenged. Lords and Members of the Commons would feel able to discuss the application of the specialist knowledge, but not the expertise itself.

In the case of smacking, the childcare profession is united in condemning it, and outspoken in wanting it stopped, but by a sizeable majority, the House of Lords has voted not to ban smacking outright, and the Government has been notable in its refusal to bow to professional pressure as well.

Why?

The question is : why? A wide range of rational arguments for abandoning smacking has been presented by Children Are Unbeatable, the pressure group seeking to outlaw smacking. Comparisons have been made with other countries where corporal punishment has been stopped. A number of Parliamentarians have argued strongly for a change. But, for the majority of members of the House of Lords, this was insufficient.

For the Peers and the Government to decide to reject professional thinking, there is presumably something very fundamental which has influenced them. The Government has said it does not want to be a nanny state, and wants to leave parents to make their own choices in the way they bring children up, but this line of argument is unconvincing. There are plenty of other ways in which they attempt to control people’s behaviour, for example through Criminal Justice Acts. They have been active in introducing measures to tackle crime, deal with asylum seekers, penalise speeding motorists, address binge drinking and so on. Why, then, hold back from stopping adults from assaulting little children?

It is also undoubtedly the case that the childcare profession is not as powerful a lobby in Westminster as many other power blocs such as the legal profession, the City or the defence industry. In recent times it has been vociferous, but that does not yet mean that it carries weight and influence. On its own, though, that is insufficient as an argument for the profession’s failure to carry the day. After all, there are subjects on which clear lines of argument and rational debate are sufficient to influence legislation. The block may well be more fundamental.

Every Adult has been a Child

It is possible that it is actually the familiarity of the subject that is the problem. Everyone in Parliament – peer and MP alike – has experienced their own childhood, and it has conditioned them. Many have also experienced parenthood, which may well have also been a key experience of their adult lives, both highly rewarding and at times very challenging. Child-rearing is not an activity carried out away from the public gaze. The work of child care professionals is more exposed than that of any other profession. And so, the Parliamentarians no doubt see themselves as being as experienced in bringing up children as the child care experts themselves. While this opinion is not well-founded (as they have not been trained or spent their careers researching child care), it is understandable.

We are all emotionally bound up in our experiences of child-rearing. They have shaped us as people. If we feel these experiences have been good, we identify with them strongly and we are then liable to resent and oppose any attacks on them. If we are told, then, that we were not being well brought up if our parents smacked us, or that we were bad parents if we smacked our children, we may well want to react and fend off these arguments, ignoring their rationality.

Fundamental Questions

But we must address this issue, whether we like what we see or not, and whether want to examine it or not, as it is fundamental to the philosophy of life on which British society is based.

Clearly, in looking at a complex issue of this sort, there are many strands, and there is a danger of oversimplification. There are, for example, many people who bring up their children without smacking them and who need no law to outlaw this form of control. There will also always be those who are violent to their children, regardless of the dictates of the law. What we are considering is shifts of perception and changes of emphasis, in which typical attitudes and common behaviour are modified over time.

Attitudes to Violence

In a crowded island like Britain, with a complex society and a wide range of cultures involved, it is perhaps amazing that there is so little conflict and so much tolerance of diversity. On a typical crowded tube in London, there may be people from over a hundred countries, with dozens of different first languages, different racial backgrounds, diverse religions, varied sexual proclivities and so on, but they all travel along together, shoulder to shoulder, in apparent harmony.

Yet, underneath the apparent harmony, there are strong feelings and fundamental differences of views, and some of these could easily erupt into outbreaks of violence, arising from the differences. Indeed, Britain at present has an image of being more violent than most other European cultures.

Britain is noted for it football hooliganism. It has had race riots from time to time. Violent crime, induced by binge drinking, is still increasing, by contrast with other crime trends. Our soldiers have a reputation for toughness, and a few have been prosecuted for misusing their power violently. A few parents still assault their children so seriously that they die, unlike Sweden, where smacking is banned.

The overall question facing us is whether we like society the way it is, or whether we wish to modify it. The immediate reaction may be that of course we dislike violence and want a peaceable society. But there is also the less overt admiration for toughness, the macho image of drinking till one drops, the thrill of a fight, the increasing willingness to complain and argue rather than accept poor standards, challenging styles of driving which lead to road rage, and the lack of action to counter bullying at school and work. All of these types of behaviour encourage violence and are accepted to varying degrees by sections of the population.

If as a society we are serious in wanting less violence, there needs to be an overall shift in culture too. It will not happen overnight and there will still be substantial sections of the population whose views remain unchanged, but a more tolerant peaceable social ambience will only be effected by the combined influence of Parliament and the active support of many sections of society.

The Significance of Smacking

Which is where we get back to smacking children. Let us focus on those who feel that a “loving tap” by a loving parent is good for the child, which includes many of those Parliamentarians who feel that they were well brought up and have brought up their children well. The message given by the loving tap is one of disapproval, and the little child knows that the symbol of disapproval by the bigger person is a degree of pain for the little person. It may be a very minor assault and it may carry no lasting physical effect such as bruising, but the message – even in good homes with loving parents – is that inflicting pain is acceptable as a way of modifying another person’s conduct.

In the same way that the little child is absorbing language and other forms of social conduct, it is internalising attitudes to punishment and pain. If there is no pain, the punishment will be pointless; if there is pain, the experience will be lodged in the child’s basic thinking, and that is in fact the parent’s wish.

If this pattern is widely accepted in good homes, it is no wonder that there are more extreme forms of punishment in less loving families, at the hands of parents with less self-control or who are actually malevolent to their children. What about the good parents, for example, who hit their children out of exasperation, not as a calculated way of teaching a child good conduct, but because they are irritated beyond self-control and do not know what else to do? The initial loving tap turns by degrees into a slap, a “good beating”, a belting or grievous bodily harm. The percentage of serious cases is mercifully low, but the series of inquiries culminating in the case of Victoria Climbie indicates that they do happen, and the punishment of the children, even at that extreme level, is often justified as being reasonable chastisement.

If chastisement were not deemed reasonable in the first place, the base of this ghastly pyramid would be significantly eroded, and the total volume of the pyramid would be reduced, with fewer instances of peak abuse.

This in turn could lead to a less violent society, as succeeding generations learn that it is not necessary to smack children in order to control or educate them. We do not need to have tribal violence if we are to enjoy football matches. We do not need to get plastered and have fights if we are having an enjoyable night out. There are alternative behaviour patterns – if we seriously want to adopt them.

In her famous study, Margaret Mead compared two cultures. In one, parents were hard on the children, spoke to them sharply and punished them, and they ended up with an adult culture of the same aggressive type. In another, the children were indulged, cuddled and never punished, and the adult society was similarly laid back, friendly and easy-going. Both societies functioned, and both maintained their cultures by bringing up their children in the traditional mould.

The question our Parliamentarians must answer – and the rest of society as well – is whether they and we are happy with status quo, with its existing blend of tolerance and violence, or whether we are serious in wanting to change it. If the Government is serious in wanting to reduce violence in its peak manifestations, it should also address the culture as a whole, and this includes questioning the significance of minor forms of violence, such as “loving taps”, and perhaps the way they were brought up and the way they brought up their own children.

A Comparison

The economy does not collapse because some people shoplift, yet stealing is seen to be fundamentally wrong in the eyes of the law. A proportion of the population does not accept the Fourth Commandment in practice, but it is clear and understandable, and has the general support of society at large, and those who infringe it know that they are doing so. It is not a question of degree – that only large thefts are wrong – but of principle, in the way that we relate to each other. What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours, and we do not take things from each other without agreement.

In the case of people doing violence to each other, the law has evolved. It is no longer legal for husbands to chastise their wives or for employers to beat their servants. But big people can still hit little people – as long as they do not leave a physical mark. This is a fudge. The basic principle should be that everyone should know that they should not offer violence to other people, whoever they are.

This simple precept could be understood, while the fudge will not. It will muddy the wider understanding of the precept that violence is unacceptable. If we want a less violent society, we need the precept to be clear. Of course there will still be those who do not observe it, and of course they will not all be prosecuted. But the standard will have been set, and this is what is necessary if we are to have a less violent society.

Of course, if people are happy with things as they are, that is another matter…..