Spare the rod and the child

Press, 2 December 1989, Page 21

Spare the rod and the child

A guy who has written about his apparently idyllic upbringing in the Kiwi baby boom generation ol the 1950 s was asked in a radio interview: “Were there any disadvantages?” He answered, “There was too much hitting. You were hit for almost anything.”

Whatever my deficiencies in the child-raising department, I have never raised my hand to a child. Some years ago an Irish mother told me if she could live her life again, the one thing she would change is that she would not hit her children.

She grew up with the strong biblical message of “spare the rod and spoil the child,” and her eldest son, then 18, had borne the brunt of this.

Often, as in her case, the message to beat children is not to meet our own expectations, but the expectations of others. She said whenever she visited her sister, her son used to fidget and misbehave so her husband would take him outside and beat him.

She hated doing this, but she felt she had to insist because her sister’s children were so much better behaved. Actually, her sister used to say ... “Leave him alone, he’s 0.K.” She realised years later, she meant it. When her son was nine, she realised he no longer did the things he used to be beaten for and’ the reason her sister’s children behaved better was because they were older. So his behaviour would

have improved, even if they hadn’t beaten him. Why make his life a misery.

Her husband was also very pleased to be relieved of this awful burden, and they were both angry they had succumbed to the pressure of a society which expected them to hit their children. The Church has a lot to answer for in this respect, and so has the law. British law, which -forms the basis of the New Zealand legal system, sanctioned wife beating. In 1792 Judge Buller declared a husband could beat his wife as long as he didn’t use a . stick thicker than his thumb. This right was not removed until 1891, and it is from here that the “rule of thumb” derives.

The law, being reasonable, expected the husband to exercise the same moderation as he would when applying physical chastisement to his children or his servants. The Irish couple realised that when people beat children they do not rely on physical strength alone, but are also drawing on the moral strength of an ideological system which expects it. When I was in a supermarket a few years ago a harassed mother was going through the checkout with a most obstreperous toddler. He was mad screaming and throwing things out of the cart.

Others in the queue muttered, purely for the mum’s benefit, that all he needed was a good

Rosaleen M c Carroll

smack. Despite this she resisted and I wanted her know I was on her side.

When she got through the check-out I said, “1 am so glad you didn’t hit him,” and she burst into tears. She said he was sick and exhausted but she had nowhere to leave him and she simply had to do her shopping. Discplining children has to be far more creative than hitting them. Mine get fines deducted from their pocket money. They are fined $1 for leaving their bikes in the middle of the garage, $2 for not wearing stack hats, and $1 for eating the last banana and for swearing.

My daughter’s geography teacher, who entertains his class with stories of the beatings he used to get, said when he went back to the Alma Mater for a conference this year, his keen ear picked up the familiar “whack!” he heard it seven times. ’

He has put her right off corporal punishment (and also private schools!) She spoke against it quite perceptively. “It’s stupid hitting people to make them do what you want them to do. Of course, it will make .them do it. But it won’t make them believe it.”

She’s learnt something in school cert geography!