Would You Strike A Child?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 12 (Supplement)

Would You Strike A Child?

M THAKE the boy home and 1 give him the strap," said Magistrate No. I to a father who had let his son get into wrong ways.

"If you raise your hand to that child again I will send you to prison," said Magistrate No. 2 to a father who had not spared the rod.

Truly children are a problem. So are magistrates. This wave of juvenile delinquency that we hear about is a problem. So is the great increase in the number of prosecution* of parent* for cruelty to children.

If figures do not lie there aro more bad boys and girls about than ever before. Last year the N.S.P.C.C. dealt with nearly 50,000 cases of cruelty, involving 121.000 children.

So many youngnters were up for judgment at the recent Monmouth Assizes that Mr. Justico <liarles, who is Sir, Ernest Oniric* when lie is off the bench, took alarm. Trying to discover the cause of all this juvenile wickedness, he recalled his own 11'i\ 11.toil. Hp said!

When I did wrong 1 \vn« corrected, not, by being sent to mm approved school, but by that manner of .Direction whi.-h

is so valuable to young people, and which prevents them from again doing wrong, without any loss of their •elf-respect, and without loss of humanity in those who administered that correction. In short, he was walloped. Ought these growing youngsters to knnwT When they go wrong for want of knowing, ought they to be handed over to the police and the magistrates for correction ? Is the magistrate, ordering the birch, a better man than the boy's father who, by a simple clout over the ear, might have prevented the boy from performing the act for which he is to bo birched? Twenty years ago these questions would have been absurd. It is only recently that magistrates have begun to tell parents that if they lay hands on their own children they will go to gaol.

Mr. Justice Charles dissents sharply from the views of these magistrates. He looks at the long list of boys and girls who have run foul of the law, and he §ay«:

The wave of sentiment that i« passing over the country ig not for the good of young people.

Juvenile crime has assumed (he proportions of a nave m England recently and has aroused a strong controversy) regarding methods of correction for delinquents, both in the home and at the hands of the law. In this article a parent well known to millions of Englishmen slates what he things about it

By--H. W. Seaman

I submit that It Is not for the good of anybody. Sentimentality does not mean love, honour, gratitude, patriotism; it means avoiding the truth about these and all other honest emotions. Children have more opportunities to commit offences nowadays. Thirty years ago the streets were playgrounds. If a hoy put a tipcat through a window his father paid for the damage and took it out on the boy's hide. Honour was satisfied without police intervention.

There was less sentiment and more common sense. Nobody would have asked such a ridiculous question as "Could you strike a child?" But put that question now to the first six persons you moot and you will

find they will dodge it. It is too blunt for them. They would rather he asked something easy, soft and sentimental.

Deepest in the sentimental mire is he who replies: "\ee, for the child's own good." When my father walloped me I used to bawl like a bull, and the louder I bawled the harder my father laid it on. Nowadays the bawling would bring in the neighbours, and the neighbours would bring in the N.S.F.C.C., and the hoy would be a martyr and the father a scoundrel. In spite of the figures, I do not believe that parents are more cruel than they nsed to be. But I am not discussing cruelty, for there are no two sides to that. Wha't ia challenged to-dav is a parent's right to punish his own child in a proper manner. Do I now thank my father for chastising me? No; I am indifferent to it. Xor do I forgive him, for there is nothing to forgive. Since then I have brought up a child of my own, and from time to time 1 have had to take her to task. If I were not trying to avoid sentiment and tell the honest truth I should express sorrow for striking my daughter. I should say that I had 'to strike her for her own good. That would be a sentimental lie. I never struck her unless I was anTv. Mr. .Justice Charles was right. We

tre so smeared over with sentiment that we cannot open our eyes and see the truth.