Nationally representative samples of parents have been asked about knowledge, attitudes to spanking and behaviour according to Conflict Tactic Scale, an internationally well renowned methodology developed by Murray Straus 6 in For the majority of young Swedish parents, spanking is not an option and is looked on as adverse behaviour. Sweden also launched an unprecedented publicity campaign at the time of the introduction of the law see figures 1 and 2 illustrating the publicity used at the time.
Recent research indicates that such campaigns and follow-ups of the law are important as people in many countries continue to believe in the necessity of corporal punishment despite legal bans. Publicity leaflet Swedish: Can you bring up children successfully without smacking of spanking? However, it is also critical for the state and local community groups to provide full support and education for parents in tackling difficult child behaviour, which is perhaps worsened by lifestyle notably family breakup, drug abuse and the excessive use of social media.
In Scotland, a group of non-governmental organisations NGOs published a report 9 in and the Scottish Green Party took the Bill through the Scottish Parliament; there was strong and consistent support from paediatricians in Scotland and from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. In countries yet to institute a ban, civil society is also working together and this collaboration gives hope for future reform.
For example, in Uganda—a country where there is quite strong support for smacking in the home, the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network 11 is a coalition of child-focused organisations including community-based, national and international NGOs working for the welfare and rights of children in Uganda which has called for the end to violence against children in the home.
This will require an extensive education campaign both on the high risks of hitting children and on the substantial benefits of non-violent parenting. Practical steps which can be taken by paediatricians are:. Find out your national paediatric association stance on corporal punishment and work with others to influence this. Write to your MP or other government representative to ask for national legislation against corporal punishment, possibly with anonymised examples from your practice.
Contributors: Both authors contributed equally to this editorial. Funding: The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Competing interests: None declared.
Patient consent for publication: Not required. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. BMJ Paediatr Open. Published online Jul Tony Waterston 1 and Staffan Janson 2.
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Corresponding author. Correspondence to Dr Tony Waterston; ku. Keywords: ethics, child abuse. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. A campaign against the ban has been led by the Be Reasonable Scotland group, which argues that the move - while well-intentioned - could do more harm than good.
The group argues that the current law only allows parents to use "very mild discipline" such as a smack on the hand or bottom - which would become a criminal offence in the future. They say that the "unnecessary" changes will therefore do nothing more to help vulnerable children who are the victims of serious physical abuse, but will cause traumatic interventions in "good" families. And they have urged the government to instead invest in social work and other services to improve their ability to identify and tackle genuine abuse.
Parents in England and Wales can currently face criminal charges if they hit a child so hard that it leaves a mark, or causes bruising, swelling, cuts, grazes or scratches. However Wales is close to an outright ban , with a bill currently working its way through the Welsh assembly that would remove the defence of "reasonable punishment" that has been in force since Victorian times in England and Wales.
There have been calls for England to follow suit, with the Association of Educational Psychologists saying last year that smacking is harmful to children's mental health and should be banned. Northern Ireland has similar legal provisions to those in England and Wales, while Ireland banned smacking in Image source, Getty Images.
The change to the law will make it a criminal offence for parents to smack their child on the bottom. Watch live coverage of the debate. What physical punishment are parents currently allowed to use?
How will this change? Elizabeth Gershoff, professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the study, said previous work has shown that corporal punishment can have serious consequences. But Gershoff said while the international scale of the new study was impressive, the research did not look at how fighting among adolescents changed from before a ban to after it was introduced.
She also said the study failed to consider whether, for countries with bans, the law was in place when the adolescents were young children — a time when smacking is most common. Alana Ryan, senior public affairs and policy officer at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children , said the study suggests national bans keep children safe from their peers as well as adults. This article is more than 3 years old. An adult delivering a smack. Some parents call it a loving smack.
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