A cross-party group of MPs is calling for a ban in England on hitting children. About time, too. Scotland and Wales already have one. In English common law, though, there’s still a defence of “reasonable punishment” that can get adults in positions of authority off the hook for this form of violence if it doesn’t cause actual or grievous bodily harm.
The arguments for outlawing all corporal punishment are strong. First, there are physical risks – both from the blows themselves, which at worst cause brain damage and even death, but also from accidents, as when a child is caught off-guard and injured in a fall. There’s also the danger of escalation when a parent begins by lightly smacking a child, and then moves up the scale of violence. That’s a slippery slope argument, the idea that once you take a step in a particular direction, you’ll probably end up at the bottom of the slope, doing far more serious things.
Slippery slope arguments are open to the objection that descent is not inevitable: it’s possible to dig your heels in and say: “here and no further”. Many parents reprimand their children with a light tap on the hand, never using more force than that. But that’s not how it works for others, once the taboo on hitting a child has been broken. We should use the law to address this risk of escalating violence. That will provide a legal framework for early intervention. A law-change won’t deter everyone, but it could give bystanders clearer grounds for reporting concerns without the likelihood of being told they are over-reacting.
Risk of bodily harm is not the only important factor here. Modelling physical violence as a way of controlling other people is bad in itself. Emotional damage for victims can be long-lasting and debilitating, too. It can also reinforce cycles of violence that are difficult to break, with victims themselves becoming perpetrators. Beyond this, there is substantial evidence that corporal punishment is not particularly effective at controlling behaviour. But even if it were, it would still be wrong.
As someone who grew up in the 60s and 70s, when hitting children was commonplace and treated as a normal part of child-rearing, I wholeheartedly support the proposed ban. My middle-class parents would lash out at me if I misbehaved, slapping me around the head. This was always the result of momentary anger and accompanied by shouting, rather than the sustained sadism that some children experienced then, and many still do. It always seemed a failure on the adult’s part rather than mine, a failure of control. It only stopped when, aged 15, I grabbed my father’s raised hand and threatened to hit him back. I suspect I’m far from alone in harbouring deep anger at this aspect of my childhood.
At primary school, children were regularly slapped, sometimes sadistically. I remember a scarlet handprint on the calf of a friend who wasn’t quick enough changing for PE, and a little girl hit on the back of her head for not eating her school lunch. By the time I was 11, I was adept at dodging flying board rubbers and chalk. At my secondary school, the headteacher would still cane recalcitrant pupils, and we all knew about the chemistry teacher who delighted in humiliating particular male pupils, often with the aid of an old plimsoll. I made contact many years later with one of his favourite victims and can attest that “victim” is the right word to use here. This is anecdotal evidence, of course, and some of those who were regularly hit may have emerged unscathed. But if even a small percentage of people suffer emotional damage from such sanctioned adult violence, that is unacceptable.
The deep irony is that some who hit children justify their actions on paternalistic grounds. “It’s for the children’s own good”, “children should learn to respect their elders, not be disruptive,” they say. But neither the spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child and it-never-did-me-any-harm schools of educational psychology have evidence to support them.
Back in 1927, Bertrand and Dora Russell opened a progressive school where children were never hit. That made it exceptional at the time. Russell’s own child-rearing practices were far from exemplary – over-influenced by behaviourism, for example, he tried to extinguish his son’s fear of water by repeatedly forcing him into the sea. But he was right about the emotional damage corporal punishment causes. Nearly a century later, no one should need to beat this or any other lesson into anyone.
