“Barnardos New Zealand continues to support the child discipline law as the best option for New Zealand because it sets a clear standard that children should be allowed to live free from violence,” Barnardos Chief Executive Murray Edridge said tonight.
“The referendum did not ask a direct question about people’s acceptance or otherwise of the law. It suggested that hitting children was good parenting practice and that ‘good’ parents are being criminalised when neither is true. Because of this, we are aware that some people preferred to abstain from voting even though they strongly support the current law.
“As such, the referendum doesn’t provide any clear mandate for change. We urge Members of Parliament to wait for the outcome of the review of the law because it will deal with the facts and provide an objective and dispassionate view of how the law is working.
“Change to the law should not be considered now but rather an ongoing monitoring programme should be established – using sound measures to monitor the law’s impact and effects. There should also be increased public education about the law and positive, non-physical discipline.
“The referendum was a great opportunity for Barnardos, and the long list of other credible agencies working with children and families, to better inform people about the law and about positive parenting. Research is showing that growing numbers of parents recognise there is no need to use physical punishment and the law is consistent with this shift in public attitudes and behaviour.
“We are pleased that 11 percent of the votes expressed support for the law and we are confident that over time even higher numbers of Kiwis will acknowledge the need for the law as it now stands,” concluded Mr Edridge.
The outcome of the child discipline referendum, announced this evening, was always a foregone conclusion, given the confusing and leading question that it asked, says the Yes Vote coalition, which supports the law as it stands.
“The Yes Vote ran a positive, constructive campaign that attracted the support of hundreds of organisations that deal daily with children and families, and thousands of individuals who reject physical punishment as effective parenting,” said the coalition’s spokesperson, Deborah Morris-Travers.
“We ran the Yes Vote campaign because we believed it was important to have a voice that stood up for children.
“We’re proud to have made that positive contribution, and applaud the political courage of the current Parliament in sticking with the law as it stands.”
While it had cost NZ$9 million, was divisive and unnecessary, the referendum had not been totally without value, Ms Morris-Travers said.
“Strong evidence emerged during the referendum period that smacking is dying out among today’s parents. Good parents are looking for better ways to raise their children, and increasingly questioning the outdated notion of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’.
“By equating smacking with good parenting, even the referendum’s question helped deepen public debate on the issue, since large numbers of both Yes and No voters reject that notion.
“With the law as it stands working well, I suspect we will look back in 10 years time and wonder what all the fuss was about.”
The Boston Globe reports on recent US research on smacking. Some quotes from Murray Straus, founder of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampsire:
“Suppose there are two medicines that work, but one has harmful side effects that don’t show up for 10 or 20 years. Even if one dose has only a tiny chance of an adverse effect, I think parents would want to avoid that risk. That’s the way they should think about spanking” –
When asked, “Can you think of a situation when it’s OK for a husband to slap a wife in the face,” almost half of those who had grown up being spanked regularly (three or more times a week) said yes.
“If you want your child to grow up to be the kind of person who reasons instead of hits,” he says, “I can’t imagine why any parent would ever spank.”
The current law (section 59 of the Crimes Act) not only gives children the right to protection from violence, but by removing violence as a ‘backstop option’ it paves the way for every parent to ‘think outside of the box’ and develop new parenting skills.
Mary Willow, a Wellington parent educator, recently gave 2 well-received seminars on Positive Parenting.
“Parents who use smacking say ‘you can talk till you’re blue in the face but they just don’t listen, so how are we supposed to discipline them?’ The pro-smackers have one thing right,” says Mary, “the child’s willpower and actions in the early years learn primarily through non-verbal experience. But what kind of experience is best?”
“As parenting expert Haim Ginnott once said: ‘We (parents) are the decisive element in the child’s life. It’s our personal approach that creates the climate, it’s our daily mood that makes the weather”.
Mary explains: “A large percentage of un-cooperative behaviour in children is created when we set them and ourselves up for failure. We do this through poor management of time, lack of rhythm, being distracted or overcommitted, having unrealistic expectations of tired, hungry, sick or over-stimulated children (or parents!), having inconsistent or non-existent boundaries, exhibiting poor self-control or being extreme in our reactions one way or another.”
“To add to the above, when children start to act up, we try to use reasoning (which they don’t yet have) and coercion (verbal or physical, which they imitate perfectly) to rein them in” says Mary. “The primary mode of learning in the early years is imitation. When we hit our children to discipline them, we create yet another generation of New Zealand parents lacking positive parenting skills.”
So what can we do?
“If we first work on adjusting the rhythm, environment and parental example to set both children and parents up for success, we can then focus on the small amount of ‘stuck’ behaviour that remains. This requires an understanding of how children learn at different stages and how to create successful, non-violent boundaries, both of which I teach in my seminars, playgroups, courses and counselling sessions”.
“The wonderful thing about struggling to become good parents is that it helps us to heal past wounds and move on to new levels of wisdom and creativity. You don’t wait till the last kid has left home to run off and get enlightened: if you focus and take positive parenting seriously you will be enlightened every single day!”
“My dream is that the courage of Sue Bradford to bring this law change into effect will ultimately breed a new kind of parenting in New Zealand where we help and support each other, and families grow together in joy and security.”
The Yes Vote coalition rejects today’s New Zealand Herald story claiming that the coalition has “flouted” referendum spending limit rules.
“If anything, staying within the advertising rules has taken a disproportionate amount of time and effort to interpret and comply with,” said Yes Vote spokesperson Deborah Morris-Travers. “We’ve had extensive and regular consultations with the Chief Electoral Office on how to interpret the advertising rules, and the clear advice has been that the Yes Vote campaign, branded as such, is a distinct campaign in itself.
“Our advice has been that the spending cap applies to distinct campaigns, as opposed to the possibility that one or more groups might mount their own campaigns.
“Far from flouting the regulations, we have tried to be scrupulous about following them, which makes today’s story doubly disappointing,” Ms Morris-Travers said.
In a Morning Report story today, Paediatrics Society spokesperson Russell Wills says that attitudes toward violence are changing. Parents are now approaching medical professionals saying, “I know I’m not allowed to hit my kids – can you help me?”.
The story points out that in the 2007-2008 CYF reporting year, although notifications involving smacking are up, cases requiring futher action have dropped – indicating that the law is working.
Dear NZ: Save The Children Sweden has launched a new website, www.dearnz.com to tell New Zealand what the rest of the world thinks about our referendum.
They’ve also set up a Twitter account, @nzabuse, to show real time comments.
It just goes to show that what’s happening here in Aotearoa is of international importance.
We are not alone, and the whole world is watching.
Supporters of the child discipline law as it now stands are urged to complete their referendum postal ballots and mail them before Thursday of this week, August 20, in time to be counted when voting closes on Friday evening.
“Voting Yes remains the positive option for this referendum,” says Deborah Morris-Travers of the Yes Vote coalition.
“A Yes vote supports children, good parents and the evidence published during the referendum lead-up that shows New Zealand parents are rejecting physical punishment as a ‘good parenting’ option.
“No one should be surprised that the No vote campaign is preparing a swanky hotel celebration to celebrate a hollow victory on the slanted and confusing question put to New Zealanders in this referendum,” says Ms Morris-Travers.
“The question was worded to engineer that outcome.
“What they didn’t expect was to be given a run for their money by the Yes vote campaign, which has found support throughout the community, especially among the hundreds of frontline voluntary and non-government agencies that work with real parents and real children every day of the week.”
Ms Morris-Travers appealed to supporters of the law who are abstaining from voting to think again.
“We all agree that this referendum is a waste of money on a bent question, but it is the democratic process in action. Only by voting can you truly participate and make a positive contribution for New Zealand’s children.”
Former probation officer Christopher Horan writes in today’s Otago Daily Times that people are sick of the debate and it’s time to move on, comparing the present situation to the debate around corporal punishment in schools. We moved on, and few regret the move to more effective ways of disciplining children in schools.
I’m confident that most parents who oppose Sue Bradford’s child-discipline Act are caring and responsible parents. That’s why I’m also sure they will be uneasy in the knowledge that their view is shared by most wife beaters, sex offenders, child abusers and child killers.
These are the people who cling to a distorted sense of entitlement to control the lives of others.
If you are going to use or distribute material from our campaign in any way, eg remixed or mashed up, please ensure that your actions are compliant with the relevant legislation, as the Yes Vote Coalition cannot take responsibility for actions beyond our control or knowledge.
The bottom line is that we want to play by the rules. We appreciate your support, but please act ethically, thoughtfully, and within the law.
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