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	Some mums and dads fall into a grey area that is not covered by criminal law, writes Emer O&#39;Kelly</h2>
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		The Minister for Children,&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Frances_Fitzgerald_(politician)" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(92, 139, 63);">Frances Fitzgerald</a>, has until the end of this month to tell the&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Council_of_Europe" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Council of Europe</a>&nbsp;what she is doing to outlaw physical punishment of children within the home, which the council defines as &quot;violence against children&quot;. We have already signed up to the European Social Charter which requires us to protect children and young people from violence.</h2>
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		So where does the State stand? Well of course, we&#39;ve had a referendum on children&#39;s rights, to include a constitutional specification that they have those rights.</p>
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		Just as prior to that, even without constitutional authority, we had the Children&#39;s Act 2001, which states, &quot;It shall be an offence for any person who has the custody, charge or care of a child wilfully to assault, ill-treat, neglect, abandon or expose the child, or cause or procure or allow the child to be assaulted, ill treated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to the child&#39;s health, or seriously to affect his or her wellbeing.&quot;</p>
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		And according to the minister, there&#39;s been considerable progress in &quot;encouraging&quot; parents to use &quot;non- violent forms of discipline&quot; in the family setting. So youngsters are pretty safe in their homes in this little country of ours, right? Done and dusted, with every parent who is merely given to being a bit ready with the cane or fist (not violent at all, really) shivering in their shoes since 2001 if they are tempted to show a five-year-old who&#39;s boss. Yes?</p>
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		Well, let&#39;s try to define &quot;unnecessary suffering&quot; or &quot;serious effect&quot;. It&#39;s a bit like trying to define the risk to the mother&#39;s life/health under the terms of the Protection of&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Life_(show)" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Life</a>&nbsp;During Pregnancy Act.</p>
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		Should it be a crime to catch the flailing hand of a purple-faced screaming three-year-old, look them firmly in the eye, say a sharp &quot;no!&quot; and smack the hand? Institutions and individuals who believe that all physical punishment of children should be outlawed, believe that it should.</p>
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		Other people, those who believe in the &quot;inviolability&quot; of family life and the absolute authority vested in parents by nature of the &quot;natural law&quot;/ divine law believe the State and/or the law have no right to intervene in the method of punishment a parent uses to discipline a child. Those who are against physical punishment suggest that &quot;other&quot; means of discipline should be used; but in practice that can mean no discipline at all.</p>
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		Since the debate reignited in past weeks, one expert has said that it had been found that physical punishment of children led to defiance and outrageous behaviour. That rather surprised me. In my experience, severe physical punishment leads to permanent cringing fear on the part of the child, who becomes quiet and withdrawn, and lives its little life in desperate attempts not to offend or draw attention to itself. Such a child strives all the time to &quot;be good&quot; to an unnatural level, tries so hard to please in all circumstances that other children see them as toadies, sneaks, and a general pain in the neck. Frequently they are bullied.</p>
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			<span class="CTXempty" style="margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; text-decoration: inherit !important; float: none !important;">Parents who think they have a right to discipline a child as they see&nbsp;<span id="link0" name="link0" style="margin: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px !important; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 1em; height: auto; cursor: pointer; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 153, 0); text-decoration: underline !important; color: rgb(0, 153, 0) !important;">fit</span>&nbsp;do not accept that they are causing &quot;unnecessary suffering&quot; when they fly into a blind rage and take out their frustrations by beating the living daylights out of the child. They feel confident, as the child becomes more and more quiet, and goes into the teenage years spending all its time in its bedroom, that they have done an excellent job of parenting: they have produced an amenable child who gives no trouble, makes no demands, and shows no sign of becoming a teenage tearaway. They don&#39;t go out, so they don&#39;t get into trouble. They have no friends, so they are not led astray. If somebody told the parents that they had destroyed the confidence, even the soul, of another human being, they would be astounded. It&#39;s a parent&#39;s duty to do as they see fit, they say.</span></p>
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			Such parents fall into the grey area that is not covered by criminal law. The right of a parent to use &quot;reasonable and moderate chastisement&quot; was withdrawn in the 2001 Children&#39;s Act. But under common law, the defence of &quot;reasonable chastisement&quot; of a child can be offered in the courts. That&#39;s what the&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Council_of_Europe" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Council of Europe</a>&nbsp;is kicking up about.</p>
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			So what&#39;s &quot;reasonable&quot;? I mentioned smacking a child on the hand to stop a raging tantrum. Or smacking an energetic four-year-old on his little backside, once, when you catch him trying to remove the fireguard to throw paper on the fire and make a nice blaze. Those who want physical punishment outlawed recommend discussing the rights and wrongs of it with the child, and explaining that it is &quot;inappropriate&quot; behaviour. Lord, I hate that word.</p>
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			It&#39;s not &quot;inappropriate&quot;: it&#39;s bloody dangerous, and absolutely terrifying to think what might happen if the child succeeded. Having a discussion with a little person who still has goldfish memory doesn&#39;t convey that. The words &quot;naughty&quot; and &quot;wrong&quot; allied to a quick little smack delivered without raising the arm like a battering ram, works. And it is likely to be remembered if the child is then told with absolute clarity that they are forbidden ever to do it again because it is &quot;wrong&quot;. A long explanation of the moralities involved rather than a clear order will merely bore the child: they&#39;re not idiots, and know when to shut off when people clack endlessly at them.</p>
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			If that smack is physical punishment, I&#39;m all in favour of it. I might not be, if the kind of people who want it banned came up with a sensible alternative. Instead, they suggest that when a five-year- old grabs her baby brother&#39;s teddy from him, kicks him, and tries to smother him with the teddy, she should be distracted and told that it&#39;s not a nice thing to do. She knows already it&#39;s not a nice thing to do. What she needs to learn is that there are nasty consequences for doing it.</p>
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			Children don&#39;t need protection under law in situations like that; they need the adults around them to have a bit of sense. But they do need protection from parents who lack self-control and are determined to ensure that the child is immediately and completely submissive: that is the purpose of using beating as a punishment. It works: it relieves the parent, and cows the child. And it has dreadful, long-term consequences of insecurity and loneliness.</p>
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			Parents have an incontrovertible right to establish that they are the boss: it gives youngsters a sense of security, apart from anything else. But taking a bunch of garden canes, and whipping a small child around the house, inflicting enough injury to leave the child&#39;s backside scarred for life before throwing it on a bed with the promise that there&#39;ll be more in the morning, needs intervention.</p>
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			But, tragically, all the laws in the world will not turn rotten parents into good ones. And mothers (or fathers) who beat their children are not going to tell the children that what they are doing is illegal, while the outside world merely sees a quiet, well-behaved child. And I don&#39;t envy the minister, or the Council of Europe, the task of sorting out that one.</p>
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			<a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/emer-okelly-no-law-can-fully-protect-a-child-from-bad-parents-29561445.html">http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/emer-okelly-no-law-can-fully-protect-a-child-from-bad-parents-29561445.html</a></p>
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