The Appeal of Repeal

It's my fervent hope that in the next few weeks Sue Bradford's bill to remove parental discipline as a defence under the Crimes Act will pass into law. I haven't written about this earlier because I haven't really had time, but I'm about to rectify that omission, oh yes indeedy.

For me the debate about repealing s59 actually began in 2000, when I was first involved in Staunch Alliance and was made aware that repeal was on Laila Harre's agenda as Minister of Youth Affairs. It was something on the edges of my political perception - I didn't fully understand it and it didn't seem likely to pop up on the public agenda anytime soon. Certainly it didn't apply to my life right then - it was a long time since I had been smacked, and the likelihood of me in the possible role of smacker seemed an equal infinity away.

Now Sue Bradford (my favourite Green MP by a long way) has a Private Member's Bill that looks likely to pass in the next fortnight, removing an archaic defence from our books. I've long found it anathema that many see their children (particularly their daughters) as personal property. It just seems bizarre to me that we purport to care so much for our children, and yet we hit them.

I don't recall being smacked often myself. In fact I can only explicitly remember one time - the last time. I think it was the third time I was ever smacked, I was a pretty tame child.

I remember this occasion quite vividly. I must have been about 7 or 8 and I remember Mum sitting down on the edge of her bed, facing the wall, and pulling me over her knee. It was the old bedspread, the blue paisley one, but it was new then. I recall that she was very very angry, and I can remember thinking that she wasn't really angry with me and that what I had done wrong (lost in the mists of time) wasn't sufficient for a smack. As the hits came I felt a righteous anger that I hadn't deserved it, that, bloody-minded little bugger that I was, it wasn't going to stop me from doing whatever I'd done again. Serve her right I thought, she's punished me and I will punish her. Eye for an eye and all that. Being much littler than her I intended to store my vengeance away, stoke it mightily, and one day wreak my revenge. I can't recall if I ever did or not.

The other thing I remember very strongly was the tears. Not just mine, but Mum's too. She was angry yes, but when she was done she was sad. She apologised to me and hugged me, we were both crying. I still felt unfairly treated, but I recall being grateful that she had recognised the injustice in her action.

Not to malign my mother at all, who has been and remains a really wonderful parent and grandparent, but I always had the sense that she did it at a desperate time, not because she thought it would be the most effective parenting tool but because she needed to lash out. Certainly I could see afterwards that we both felt bad about it; me because I felt it was uncalled for, and she perhaps because she knew that. We've never discussed it, so I don't actually know what her motivation was or how she felt, beyond what I could see for myself and interpret with my child's mind, and what I remember of that now.

Smacking from the parental perspective is not something I've experienced yet, so I have to go on my recollection of being on the receiving end. I acknowledge that experience changes your views on things. Just as in the past I have changed my mind about abortion, there is a possibility I might change my view on smacking, or anything else for that matter. But I can't really write about how I might feel in an unknown future. Certainly my intention now is not to use violence against my own children.*

But I can see the argument about slapping a child's hand away from a hot element, carefully carrying a child to a time-out place, pushing a toddler out of the way of harm. I do not believe that any of these sensible precautions, motivated not by anger but by protection, will be prosecuted after s59 is repealed.

In fact Bradford's Bill (amended and subsequently backed by the majority of the Select Committee who considered it) very specifically allows this kind of action, thusly:

1. Every parent of a child... is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of:
preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence;
or preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour;
or performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.

2. Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.

3. Subsection (2) prevails over subsection (1).

The Select Committee report is an interesting read, in particular the summary of the points made by submitters for and against, and the statement that Child, Youth and Family indicated they did not expect their thresholds for removal of children would change if s59 was repealed. The report states in it's conclusion:

We consider that there is widespread misunderstanding about the purpose and
possible results of the bill as introduced. We do not consider that the repeal of section 59 will lead to the prosecution of large numbers of parents ... in New Zealand. (my emphasis)

I've been thinking about how we eradicated corporal punishment** in our schools. It was a similar situation, where many teachers had to dig deep and find new tools to control and discipline their students now that violence was no longer an option. And they did. It is now rare that a child is hit by their teacher, and when it does happen there is outrage from everyone involved, and rightly so. Why should parents magically have a right to strike their child when no one else does, and it is acknowledged that no one else should?

While I don't want to give too much kudos to the Maori Party (given that the Greens and Labour have backed repeal all along and deserve more of the credit) I did like what Pita Sharples said when he announced their four votes in favour (mp3):

We are asking NZ to be brave, to look at the possibility of a culture where we
don't hit our children, and that we can actually find an alternative way of
bringing up our children.

I'm an idealist, there is no denying that, and a piece of legislation like this, one that imagines a hopeful future, is one that I can joyously back with my whole heart.

* Yes, I think smacking is violence. It's hitting isn't it? I haven't got room in this post to go into the particular issue of the way this debate has been hijacked to be about just smacking, when it is actually about violence, of which smacking is a sub-section. I accept that the debate now is about smacking, as much as that was never Bradford's intention, and so that's what I've written about here.
** Which I note often took forms similar to current child discipline methods used by some parents.