New Zealand bishops demand balance in polarized ‘spanking’ debate
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Wellington, New Zealand, May 2, 2007 / 12:48 pm (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of New Zealand are calling on government to support and help parents make the best possible decisions for the upbringing of their children.

Last week, the Catholic bishops issued a statement about the need to protect children against violence. They were critical of the legal status quo where parents have been able to defend violence against children as ‘reasonable force’ under the Crimes Act, which has not given adequate protection to children.

At the same time, they wrote that government should respect and not interfere unnecessarily with decisions that families are able to make for themselves, unless a child’s safety is at risk. They do not see minor and infrequent acts of physical punishment, such as spanking, as putting a child’s safety at risk.

They believe that the extremely polarized positions dominating the public debate, endorsing either violence against children in the name of discipline, or seeking the elimination of minor or intermittent acts of physical restraint of children by their parents, are unhelpful.

Caritas, the Catholic Church agency for justice, peace and development, called for more clarity and definition about the threshold for police prosecution of parents using physical punishment.

While recognizing that there are better means of discipline than physical punishment, Caritas does not believe that parents should be prosecuted for minor or intermittent acts of physical punishment of children. If this is the government’s intention, Caritas said, the law should say so.

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Subscriber comments:
Published by: PDeverit
Seattle, WA, USA 08/01/2009 07:21 AM EST
Most compelling of all reasons to abandon this worst of all bad habits is the fact that buttock-battering can be unintentional sexual abuse for some children. There is an abundance of educational literature available on the subject that can easily be found by doing a little research on the topic.

Just a handful of those helping to raise awareness of why child buttock-battering isn't a good idea:

American Academy of Pediatrics

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Center For Effective Discipline

PsycHealth Ltd Behavioral Health Professionals

Churches' Network For Non-Violence

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu (supports Global Initiative)

Parenting In Jesus' Footsteps

Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment of Children

United Nations Convention On the Rights of the Child

There are 26 countries in which child buttock-battering is prohibited by law.
In fact, the US was the only UN member that did not sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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