And while good parents doing a good job are being criminalised, we have the state taking literally thousands of children away from their families every year, and then playing pass the parcel with their lives, shifting them from home to home to home - sometimes over ten shifts per year.

If they we’re stuffed up before, yopu can guaranatee they will be now.

It’s state sponsored child abuse.

And do the idealogues of government really have our childrens best interests at heart? More and more people are saying the lack of male teachers is causing problems with both girls and boys as many have no male role models in their lives.

With new male teachers at a paltry 10% and dropping, the Education Department say they are quite happy with the situation and will let it continue - they have no interest in sorting out the problem.

Fair enough.

What I find highly disagreeable is the implication that those who smack their children lack parental skills, and, through ignorance, do harm to their children.

This is simply not true, as the Dunedin study shows. As Kevyn has stated - at best, this area is gray.

What is even more offensive is the criminalization of parents who have a reasoned basis for smacking, a position supported by research.

Punishment by the state has been decreed by a small group of well-meaning, yet seemingly ignorant, zealots, who refuse to let the facts cloud their ideology.

It wouldn’t matter how many studies show that smacking did no harm. They detest smacking. Full stop.

[This briefing sheet has been provided by the following
organisations —
• Barnardos NZ
• EPOCH NZ
• National Collective of
Independent Women’s
Refuges
• Plunket
• Save the Children NZ
• Unicef
…………… They base their evaluation
upon
• international research,
• their knowledge of best parenting practice,
• their understanding of human rights.]

There are conflicting views in many areas, I would like to see what their decisions were and why… a sort of auditing of the decision making process.
jh

http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4059723a22215.html
jh

wiktionary says otherwise:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/converse “The opposite or reverse.”

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bigot “One strongly loyal to one’s own social group, and irrationally intolerant or disdainful of others”

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bigotry “The characteristic qualities of a bigot; intolerance or prejudice, especially religious or racial.”

I think Toad’s lapse of good judgement in this instance is a good indicator that this debate has become heated to the point that it is bringing out the worst in everyone and is becoming counterproductive.

Personally I have always found emotional abuse far more cripling and less foregivable than physical abuse. But that it just my own personal experience. The balance of the evidence indicates that there is too much that science and medicine don’t know about human behaviour and psychology to be able to draw any valid conclusion on whether smacking should be defined as good or bad parenting.

There is considerable anecdotal evidence that much more harm is being done to our children and future society by subjecting them to an education system awash in relativism. The attitudes expressed by those immersed in the boy racer phenomonen, “me-me-me” consumerism and in-your-face binge drinking seem to be a logical outcome a relativist indoctrination.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/relativism “(philosophy) A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.”

I am assuming that relativism was adopted as a means to tackle discrimination but it seems to have had the opposite effect of fragmenting society into groups of narrowly defined like minded people.

Great for product marketing but not great for building a healthy society.

Politicians are elected to provide leadership towards a better society,
——-
Haven’t you ever listened to the rhetorical twaddle in parliment Toad? I don’t hear much objectivity, critical thinking. Helen Clark told her mp’s how to vote.
Presumably all Labour and Green MPs don’t agree with Proffessor David Fergussen when he said that:
the prospect of reducing child abuse by outlawing smacking was vanishingly small. [but what makes those mp’s so smart one wonders…. ]
jh

Nice try Toad - it’s a bit of a myth though.

“Much of Europe” EXCEPT for Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy who have the lowest child abuse in the world (half that of Sweden and lower), and allow smacking. Others that allow smacking are Netherlands - (also lower than Sweden) and Poland UK, Switzerland etc.

It completely ruins the Sweden/Europe myth that anti-smackers trot out to try to mislead people.

See “The Swedish Myth”, published in The British Journal of Social Workers
http://www.storesonline.com/members/846699/uploaded/Child_deaths_in_Sw eden.pdf

Saying the state needs to step in assumes the state knows best. How does the state know best?> it has experts who rely on studies (presumably).. Cindy Kiro quoted a meta analysis. However the Otago Study seems to be the most extensive and state of the art (ground breaking), the first that asks about the occasional light smack. It concludes that (among other things):
“Study members in the ’smacking only’ category of punishment appeared to be particularly high-functioning and achieving members of society,” she said.

“I have looked at just about every study I can lay my hands on, and there are thousands, and I have not found any evidence that an occasional mild smack with an open hand on the clothed behind or the leg or hand is harmful or instils violence in kids,” she said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10404809

This suggests that government policy is ideologically driven.

The 80% who dissagree may perhaps be “the wisdom of crowds”.
jh