Are the pope’s comments on smacking children right?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/06/pope-smacking-child-correcting-behaviour

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At the pope’s general audience this week he outlined the traits of a good father and told a story to illustrate. “One time,” he said, “I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say ‘I sometimes have to smack my children a bit, but never in the face so as not to humiliate them’.” The pope then added, of this story: “How beautiful. He knows the sense of dignity! He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on.”

Do you agree with the pope that it is acceptable to spank your child, as long as the child’s dignity is maintained? Here four writers give their views:

Joanna Moorhead: he has no place to say anything about parenting

Everything in life is relative, so when we talk of Pope Francis as a breath of fresh air, a reforming pontiff and revolutionary figure, we have to remember that he is only those things in relation to an ancient, male-dominated, conservative institution that has remained steadfastly unchanged while the world transformed around it.

So his remarks on smacking shouldn’t be seen as a sign that we were wrong about him; they should be seen as a reminder of who he really is. Yes, he has the human touch; yes, he is a charismatic figure. He is able to convey a commonsense approach to Christianity, and has a handle on what really counts and what doesn’t matter a jot about the church’s teaching and its moral leadership. But when it comes to families and parenting, just as when it comes to women, we really have to ask ourselves: why should he be in a position to say anything useful? Because his points of reference hark back to Argentina in the 1930s and 40s, and both theory and practice on child discipline in western Europe in 2015 are a world away from that.

Related: Pope Francis says it is OK to smack children if their ‘dignity is maintained’

In a church that doesn’t allow its priests to marry, the ideas of its leadership on families and how they are run is forever frozen in a time decades before when the leaders themselves were raised. It is one of the biggest flaws of the Catholic church, because it cuts the men at the top off from a normal experience of life. And yes they see families in their parishes, and yes they have brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews who raise children, but it is down there in the doing of it that our ideas are formed and our strategies worked out.

So Francis is, of course, entirely misguided in his remarks on smacking for today’s Europe – how do you retain the dignity of a child while smacking him or her; how could he possibly think it is OK provided it doesn’t involve blows to the face? – but no doubt he’d have been seen as liberal if he’d made his comments in Buenos Aires in 1945. He’s not a bad man, and he’s not a harsh man – as his press team say, you only have to see him greeting children in St Peter’s Square to recognise that. He’s a victim of a strange and misguided set of rules that have somehow conspired to rule that marriage, raising children and being moulded by these experiences is incompatible with being the leader of a Christian church. And that’s every bit as wrong as his views on child discipline.

Joanna Moorhead writes for the Guardian about parenting and family life

Masuma Rahim: it is an act of adult aggression towards a child

The pope has reignited the debate over smacking children, saying it is fine to do so as a means of “correcting” behaviour as long as the child’s “dignity is maintained”. Smacking is evidently distinct from outright physical abuse, but there is evidence that, among some parents, the use of whips, belts and electrical flex is considered a perfectly acceptable means of “correction”.

Comments relating to corporal punishment arouse strong feelings, often based on personal moral codes and individual experiences rather than scientific evidence. A review of 88 studies investigating the effects of corporal punishment concluded that although punishing children physically often leads to immediate compliance with parental demands, this “good behaviour” was rarely maintained in the long term as children failed to internalise moral norms and social rules.

In addition, being punished by someone who holds such power over them can result in delays in the development of moral reasoning. For parents, immediate obedience from their children is likely to be considered a good thing, but surely most parents would prefer to raise children capable of judging which behaviours are appropriate in any given situation. Smacking, especially when unaccompanied by any other means of discipline, is unlikely to result in well-developed abilities to make those judgments.

Discipline is a necessary part of child rearing, but there is no reason to assume that discipline has to be enforced through aggression. Ultimately, smacking is an act of adult aggression towards a child; by its very nature it is aggression based on a significant power differential. All parental violence can result in fear, resentment and humiliation on the part of the child. Discipline can, and should, take place within the context of mutually respectful and non-coercive relationships. It would not be controversial to suggest that physical violence is anathema to both respect and non-coercion.

Masuma Rahim is a clinical psychologist

Zoe Williams: children will generally do as you do

“Kids, huh. You can’t teach them anything, but they learn everything from you.” The most acute and recognisable remark I’ve ever read about parenting came from an interview with Johnny Ball, brilliant television-presenting father of brilliant television presenter Zoe Ball). Children aren’t dogs one can simply instruct; they may sometimes do as you say, but more often they will do as you do.

Once you imagine your behaviour as role modelling, rather than the more “input in: results out” characterisation that smackers prefer, you have to ask: what moral universe am I modelling when I hit my child? It is one in which the strong dominate the weak by bare physical assertion; one where you prove your sincerity and seriousness by force; one, indeed, where violence is the logical endpoint of censure, the zenith at which true authority is demonstrated.

You could argue, I guess, that completely righteous smacking reinforces an important message about justice – punishment will be decisive and unyielding – but here you have to make damn sure you’re right. Usually when you read a defence of smacking it is set up as “my three-year-old ran into the road” or “my six-year-old was holding a burning coal to the face of his sister” – these are highly emotional situations. They are not the best circumstances in which to place an all-or-nothing bet on your judgment.

There is an argument that smacking breaches a child’s human rights – I don’t disagree, I think if we accept that adults deserve to live a life free from the threat of violence, children deserve the same thing. But we breach our children’s rights all the time: every time we burst into their room, grab them, say some inane parental thing and run out again we are breaching their right to privacy and bodily autonomy. I don’t think a rights-based analysis means very much in a family. But even leaving that aside, and leaving aside the effects on the child – the insecurity, the breach of trust, the corrosion of your own relationship in pure utilitarian terms; what child am I creating to send out into the world? – you have established a number of principles which, if your children don’t discover for themselves are wrong, are going to cause a lot of pain.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Hugh Muir: the belief in smacking has largely died out

This much we know about the pope: he certainly says what he thinks. You can smack the kids, the pontiff advises, but only if their dignity is maintained in the process. A smack in the face is a no-no, he says, and it’s good that he was specific about that. He may want to issue a papal addendum about the further dos and don’ts before the global smackfest – this carnival of parental abuse – gets out of hand.

In my family we are well past the stage at which smacking the kids would be feasible, not least because the girls could now each hire themselves a good lawyer – but even when they were young, smacking didn’t seem an appropriate part of the child-rearing toolkit. It always seemed a very short term way of exercising authority, certainly of offering guidance. And it seemed a good way, too, of storing up trouble for the future. There is something uniquely pathetic about the parent who realises their smacking days are over because their once pliant, now muscular, child rises to height and hits them back.

Smacking was a big topic of my youthful conversation. My mother fully endorsed the concept, though by the time I was born she had lost the will and maybe the energy to do much about it. But among contemporaries, tales of creative parental chastisement – practices the American’s might ban as “cruel and unusual punishment” – were legion: smacks, belts, mop sticks. One boy said his dad hit him with the sofa. We didn’t take that literally.

There was a belief carried by a good many of the Windrush generation that smacking was an essential part of parenting, and those in authority who discouraged it were basically robbing parents of their ability to impose necessary discipline. That belief has largely died out now, and we are the better for it. The pope says much that is good, but some traditions aren’t worth reviving.

Hugh Muir is a Guardian leader writer and columnist