Spanking was once considered a standard parenting practice. Mr. Fowler says that the 2004 decision brought the law in line with modern values.
“Values have shifted in the sense that probably the majority of well-educated and well-meaning parents would agree that physical punishment is inappropriate. I think a majority of parents would say that a physical form of correction is inevitable.”
Maybe the messages sent out by bodies like the Public Health Agency of Canada, which states on its site, “Never spank! It simply doesn’t work – for the child or the parent,” are working.
Martha Mackinnon, the executive director of the Toronto legal-aid group Children, Youth and the Law, the group that took the issue to the Supreme Court, says there is evidence that the practice is on the decline. Of people who were spanked as kids, “an increasing number won’t spank their own kids,” she says. They look for other non-physical disciplinary tactics, she says.
But she often has kids and parents calling to ask what’s legal. When a father recently cuffed his child with a “foodstuff” passersby called the police. Ms. Mackinnon told the frantic wife that he had, indeed, broken the law.
Another Facebook commenter, Kristin Jones Hurst, says for her, spanking is “for attention-getting, in the moment, to stop the incorrect behaviour, and is not used in anger. A spank is small, short and quick, and it shouldn’t hurt, she wrote on the Globe Life page. Beyond that, she says, alternative discipline methods are the way to go, such as “no [Nintendo] DS time, no favourite show for a week, extra chores, etc.”
And she dismisses old-school punishment as ineffective, anyway. “Waiting until you get home to wallop the kid for something they did a while ago is probably about as effective as pointing at a chewed pillow and hollering “Bad dog,” she wrote.
Canadian blogger Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother has admitted she spanked her daughter after she ran into the street. Once.
“If you’re a thoughtful, considerate parent, goes the dominant argument, you would never spank your child. Well, I did spank my child. I’m still not happy about it, but I still don’t want you to judge me for it...it’s complicated,” she wrote.
Martha Mackinnon says she and others will continue to push Canada to join the now 32-strong list of countries that do not allow parents to physically punish their children.
She says while she focuses on the law, just changing the law isn’t enough, public education, including the education of immigrants, is a necessary support in the effort to make our growing distaste for hitting kids well known.
“The message needs to be everywhere.”
Section 43, Criminal Code
Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.
According to the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2004 ruling, the use of force against a child is justified if:
1. it is administered by a parent (teachers may not use corporal punishment);
2. the child is age 2 to 12 years, inclusive;
3. the child is capable of learning from it;
4. it constitutes “minor corrective force of a transitory and trifling nature”;
5. it does not involve “the use of objects or blows or slaps to the head”;
6. it is not degrading, inhuman or harmful; and
7. it is corrective – that is, not the result of the caregiver’s “frustration, loss of temper or abusive personality.”
The Supreme Court also ruled that the seriousness of the child’s misbehaviour is not relevant in judging the “reasonableness” of the force used.
Sources: Criminal Code, Toronto Public Health Summary Report, 2007
