Outright ban on smacking children being considered

AN OUTRIGHT ban on the smacking of children by their parents is being considered.

The Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs said the prohibition is being kept “under review” and attempts by other countries to legislate for an outright ban are being examined.

Corporal punishment of children is prohibited in all settings including the home in 18 of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, but is not banned in Ireland and there is common law which recognises a parent’s right to “reasonable chastisement”.

Outlawing physical punishment is seen as problematic given the constitutional guarantees regarding the family.

Principal officer Elizabeth Canavan said the results of a comprehensive survey of parental attitudes to discipline showed a “clear ambivalence” about an outright ban.

Nearly 1,400 parents participated in the survey of attitudes to discipline, the most comprehensive research of its kind ever carried out in Ireland. It was commissioned by the Minister’s office to understand parental attitudes to discipline including physical punishment.

Ms Canavan said that, while most parents recognised that smacking their children was an ineffective means of punishment, they did not want the State to tell them how to bring up their children. She said there had been a “huge shift” in the perception of physical punishment since the time that most Irish parents were children themselves which is borne out in the research.

Though 81.2 per cent of Irish parents remember receiving a smack to the bottom, hands or legs, only 16 per cent of them used the same disciplinary strategy.

Only a tiny percentage of parents used more severe forms of physical punishment such as a smack across the face or with a slipper or belt though more than a fifth of parents experienced such punishment themselves.

Ms Canavan said it was better to encourage parents to go for non-violent means and to continue making physical punishment morally unacceptable.

“Our concern is to make sure that parents understand the best strategies. If they need support and understanding we can provide that,” she said.

“Really the parents and society set their own standards that this [physical punishment] is not acceptable any more. That seems to be the direction to travel.”

Two-thirds of Irish parents believe that giving their child an occasional smack is allowable and a quarter of all Irish parents have smacked their children in the last year with a smack on the bottom being the most common form of punishment.

While 67 per cent believed that an odd smack will not harm a child, a similar number (64.7 per cent) believe smacking is not necessary to bring up a well-behaved child.

A majority of parents (58 per cent) believe that smacking should remain legal, but only a third believe it should be legal in all circumstances.

Research was also carried out in relation to the attitude that children themselves had towards parental discipline. A total of 132 primary and secondary school children participated in the survey.

Some rationalised physical punishment on the grounds that it was often effective for a parent to get the message across and to set boundaries, but children predominantly objected to it on the basis that it caused physical pain and injury to a child and showed a lack of communication between parent and child.

Researcher Dr Elizabeth Nixon said a ban would alter public perceptions of the acceptability of physical punishment.