An NSPCC study found that 98 per cent of parents in Britain now believe it is wrong to smack a child with a hard object, while only three per cent think it is all right to shake a child.
The findings were revealed last week by NSPCC senior research officer Susan Creighton at a conference in London on encouraging helpful parenting practices. The conference, called 'It never did me any harm ...', was jointly organised by the National Early Years Network, the National Childminding Association, the Community Practitioners' and Health Visitors' Association and the NSPCC.
At the conference, health and childcare professionals called for the Government to scrap the 1860 law of 'reasonable chastisement' and to replace it with a modern law stating that hitting children is wrong and can be emotionally and physically harmful. Last week the United Nations committee on the rights of the child criticised the British Government for not having done enough to protect children.
Ms Creighton told delegates that the NSPCC had recently completed a national study of 1,250 parents of children aged nought to 12 on child discipline. The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, explored the range of disciplinary tactics parents used, including physical force, and generational continuities to find out if a parent who had been smacked as a child smacked their own children.
Parents in the study gave different reasons they physically punished their children. Just under two-thirds (64 per cent) said it was to stop them from doing something dangerous, while 48 per cent said it was to underline the seriousness of their behaviour and 36 per cent said it was to stop bad behaviour quickly.
Ms Creighton said, 'Although many parents in Britain do smack their children, most don't feel good about it.' Children interviewed for the survey showed 'remarkably sophisticated views' and empathy with their parents, she said. One eight-year-old girl said, 'I don't think the parents want to smack their children.'
Eileen Hayes, NSPCC parenting adviser, spelled out some of the myths of smacking, namely that it teaches children right from wrong, that it works well for discipline and that a 'loving' smack is safe. She said, 'Smacking is a lesson in bad behaviour to a child. It doesn't lead to a child developing a conscience or self-discipline, and what is a small slap to an adult is not small to a baby or young child.'
Further physical effects of smacking on young children were spelled out by Dr Sarah Stewart-Brown, director of the health services research unit in the Department of Public Health at Oxford University. She said babies raised in an environment of threat and fear of abandonment are hyper-alert to anxiety and the stress leads to a higher level of the hormone cortisol in their bodies.
'Their brains are in a state of arousal for a threat and are not able to focus on learning or concentrating. This gradually takes a toll on their bodies as they grow up, with mental health problems,' Dr Stewart-Brown said.
