Spanking is a thorny issue. Has what seems like a Dickensian practice been slain by liberal parenting practices? Or is it Canadians’ dirty secret?
Whatever the case, the issue is on the table again, courtesy of outspoken London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Mr. Johnson has sparked a debate in Britain by suggesting that worrying about fine distinctions – a smack on the hand. A spank on the bottom. When is it okay, when is it bad parenting, and when it is outright assault? – limits parents’ right to discipline their kids.
“People do feel anxious about imposing discipline on their children, whether the law will support them...,” he told the BBC. The comments were in support of other politicians’ statements that last summer’s London riots were, in part, caused by lax parenting.
Here in Canada, the issue of spanking children remains a relatively private and elusive issue.
Mary Ann Barker said she always thought there would be a place for spanking when she had kids. Now that she is a mother, she is decidedly anti-spanking. The Halifax mom says a firm voice gets her point across.
Furthermore, she is “concerned that if my small child were to see me slap one of my other children she might learn that behaviour, she being too young to understand the process and see ‘bad action equals slap’ and then use that formula in her own dealings with other small people …” she wrote in a Facebook exchange.
Parents might be surprised to hear we have a “spanking law” in Canada.
Section 43 of the Criminal Code – which allows for a reasonable-force defence for parents and caregivers accused of assaulting children – has had two very public outings in the past decade.
There was an eye-opening Charter challenge in 2004, with the Supreme Court upholding the law, with conditions attached. And a 2008 Senate push to strike down the law failed.
“We’re not talking about smacking our kids around the head because they looked at you the wrong way at the dining room table, like in Victorian times,” says Vancouver-based criminal lawyer Richard Fowler, a member of the group of criminal lawyers that defended the law before the Senate.
As a country, we’re still spanking our kids, but whether influenced by the law, public education or our own ethics, we’re increasingly conflicted about it.
For instance, in a 2005 study of mothers of preschoolers in Manitoba and Ontario, 70 per cent reported having used physical punishment and one-third did so at least once a week. Yet in a poll done in 2007 for The Globe and Mail by the Strategic Counsel, 78 per cent of Canadian parents of children under 18 believed that parents do not discipline their children enough these days – and 42 per cent of Canadians believed spanking is beneficial to a child’s development..
Still, other research has shown that parents are slowly internalizing reports on the body of research that links physical punishment in childhood with a number of negative outcomes, including cognitive deficits and aggressive behaviour.
In surveys, few parents believe that spanking their children is a constructive thing to do. And in his research into cross-cultural parenting differences, University of Montreal researcher Michel Claes found that Canadians were the more lenient and tolerant when compared with French and Italian parents.
So we still may be spanking a lot, but we don’t believe it’s beneficial.
When a child misbehaves repeatedly, or when a parent is tired, the urge to strike out can sometimes seem overwhelming, but parents looking for direction may find the Supreme Court’s ruling chillingly detailed in its definition.
According to the court’s conditions, parents cannot use force on a child under 2 or over 12, nor may they use objects (such as spoons and belts) or hit a child’s head. The seriousness of the child’s behaviour isn’t relevant in judging the “reasonableness” of the force used. The action also can’t be the result of a parent’s “frustration, loss of temper or abusive personality.”
