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| Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association,
14-December-2007, Vol 120 No 1267
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Smacking—are we being too heavy-handed?
Findings from the Pacific Islands Families Study
Philip J Schluter, Gerhard Sundborn, Max Abbott, Janis
Paterson
Abusive physical punishment of children by their parents or
caregivers is widely regarded as being unacceptable and illegal in most
societies.1 Such abuse can lead to juvenile
offending, substance abuse, mental health problems,
injuries,2 and even
death.3 Less clear is whether any physical
punishment of children (such as smacking) is acceptable, has adverse health or
other consequences, and should be legally permissible.
Smacking has become a topical issue in New Zealand and is
polarising individuals within families, workplaces, communities, and the nation.
Arguments about the effects of smacking are
equivocal,4,5 with two comprehensive reviews of
corporal punishment reaching different conclusions; one finding it primarily
benefical6 and one primarily
detrimental.7
The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act
2007, which came into force on 22 June 2007, removed parents or caregivers
statutory defence to use reasonable force for the purpose of correction except
in circumstances to prevent or minimise harm to the child or another person. The
purpose of this amended Act is to stop force and associated violence being
inflicted on children in the context of correction or discipline, but many
antagonists argue that the new law could make parents liable to criminal charges
each time they smack their children.
Conversely, proponents of the amended Act argue that
“mild assaults (so-called little smacks) will not result in complaints to
the police or prosecutions. However serious assaults (such as beatings with
implements and objects causing injuries) would no longer be excused as
discipline.”8
A late amendment within the Act gave police the discretion
not to prosecute complaints against parents where the offence was considered to
be inconsequential.9 However, it is unclear
what defines inconsequential offending and where on the assault-continuum that
police complaints and prosecutions will begin. Many, including Pacific Island
parents,10
lawyers,11 and the police
themselves,9 have expressed concerns if it is
left to police to exercise discretion when deciding who to prosecute in these
matters.
In New Zealand population-based surveys,
80%12 and
87%13 of respondents agreed that parents should
be able to smack a child with an open hand, consistent with prevalence figures
from the USA and elsewhere.5 Indeed, research
has demonstrated that most New Zealand parents have smacked or physically
punished their children at one time or other14
and approximately half smack their children at least once a
week.15
There is a view that physical punishment (often to extreme
levels) is the norm for Pacific peoples; a view shared by non-Pacific and
Pacific people alike.15,16 It has been argued
that the literal interpretation and acceptance of Christianity and the Bible
since the arrival of missionaries in the late
18th Century and early
19th Century was instrumental in creating this
child discipline culture.17 However, others
challenge this perception,17 and there is no
empirical evidence that supports the view that Pacific people resident in New
Zealand are more accepting of physical
punishment.12,13
Indeed, in one of New Zealand’s most recent surveys of
punishment, it was reported that Māori and Pacific people were
significantly less likely than NZ European/Other respondents to think that it
was acceptable to physically discipline children age 0–10 years
old.12 Despite this, Pacific (27%) people were
significantly more likely to think that disciplining with a wooden spoon or belt
should be legally allowable than Māori (10%) or NZ European/Other
respondents (15%).12 However, weaknesses in
that study’s results were the relatively small number of Pacific
participants (n=94), the telephone sampling technique, and the fact that
questions focused on attitudes rather than use of physical punishment in a
population (rather than parent) survey.
While attitudes towards smacking is widely supported by the
New Zealand public, the hitting of children in anger with objects, or around the
head, is not. In a targeted sample of 445 adults, when asked “Could there
be times when it is OK to hit a child in anger with (i) an object or (ii) around
the head?” 88% responded “Definitely no” to the use of an
object and 93% responded similarly to hitting around the
head.18
These New Zealand views are shared by the Canadian Supreme
Court judiciary. In January 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to repeal
Section 43 of their Criminal Code that allows parents and school teachers to
physically discipline children in their care by using “reasonable”
force.19 However, the Supreme court ruled that
for corporal punishment to be legally acceptable, it must: (i) involve only
minor corrective force of a transitory and trifling nature; (ii) can only be
used against children aged 2-12 years; (iii) and it was unacceptable to hit a
child with an object (like a belt or paddle); and, (iv) that blows or slaps to
the child’s head was unacceptable.19
The challenge in New Zealand is to define where on the
assault-continuum police complaints and prosecutions should begin. It has been
suggested that this task should encapsulate public opinion with moral and
legislative imperatives.18 Or, as more directly
and pragmatically expressed by the Minister of Justice Phil Geoff, to
“eliminate child abuse and violence against children but working within
the consensus of New Zealand public
opinion”.20
To help inform this debate, this paper aims to report the
types, frequency, and concordance of punishments employed by parents at various
ages for a large cohort of Pacific children resident in New Zealand. This
information will provide robust benchmark estimates of disciplinary practices,
and allow changes in these practices to be tracked over time following the
introduction of the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act
2007.
MethodsBackground and design—The
Pacific Islands Families (PIF) study follows a cohort of Pacific infants born at
Middlemore Hospital, South Auckland, between 15 March and 17 December 2000.
(Pacific refers to people of South Pacific Islands origin—mostly from
Samoa, Tonga, or Cook Islands.) Detailed information about the cohort, and its
recruitment and retention procedures, is described
elsewhere.21 In brief, all potential
participants were selected from births where at least one parent was identified
as being of Pacific Islands ethnicity and a New Zealand permanent resident.
Information about the study was provided to all potential participants and
consent was sought to make a home visit.
Approximately 6 weeks after infants’ births,
female interviewers of Pacific Islands ethnicity who were fluent in English and
a Pacific Islands language visited mothers in their homes. Once eligibility was
confirmed and informed consent obtained, mothers participated in 1-hour
interviews concerning family functioning and the health and development of the
child. This interview was conducted in the preferred language of the mother.
When the children reached their first, second, and
fourth birthdays, all maternal participants were re-contacted and revisited by a
female Pacific interviewer. Again, consent was obtained before the interview was
conducted in the mother’s preferred language.
At the time of the 1-year and 2-year interviews,
mothers were asked to give permission for a male Pacific interviewer to contact
and interview the father of the child. If permission and paternal contact
details were obtained, then a male Pacific interviewer contacted the father to
discuss participation in the study.
Once informed consent was obtained from the father, the
interview was carried out in the father’s preferred language. Compared
with data available from Statistics New Zealand’s 1996 and 2001
Censuses,22 the inception cohort was broadly
representative of the Pacific census
figures.21
Measures of child discipline—For
all participant and measurement waves, except the 6-week maternal interviews, a
modified version of the Parent Behavior Checklist
(PBC)23 was used. Fifteen statements were read
aloud and participants are asked to complete the sentence with responses:
daily/almost daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, never/almost never. Two
statements were relevant to this paper and included: “I smack my
child...”; and “I hit my child with an object (such as a
spoon or belt)...”.
Statistical analysis—Descriptive
statistics were used to report type and frequency of child punishment used by
parents. Concordance between maternal and paternal responses was measured using
the Kappa (κ) statistic. Using Landis and Koch’s
characterisation,24 κ>0.75 was taken to
represent strong agreement, κ<0.40 was taken to represent poor
agreement, while 0.40≤κ≤0.75 was taken to represent moderate
agreement beyond chance. Symmetry of the discordant observations was compared
using McNemar’s test.
All statistical comparisons were undertaken with a
Stata version 8.0 (Stata Corporation, College Station, Texas, USA) software
program, and α=0.05 was used to define significance.
Ethics—Ethical approval was
obtained from the Auckland Branch of the National Ethics Committee, the Royal
New Zealand Plunket Society, and the South Auckland Health Clinical Board.
ResultsIn total, 1708 mothers were identified, 1657 were invited to
participate, 1590 (96%) consented to a home visit, and of these, 1477 (93%) were
eligible for the PIF Study. Of those eligible, 1376 (93%) mothers giving birth
to 1398 infants (of which 680 (49%) were female) participated at the 6-weeks
interview.
Mothers’ mean age was 27.9 years (standard deviation
6.2 years) and selected characteristics appear in Table 1. Of the 1376 mothers
who participated at the 6-weeks postpartum interview, 1224 (89%) were
re-interviewed at 12 months, 1144 (83%) at 2 years, and 1048 (76%) were
re-interviewed at 4 years.
Table 1. Characteristics of mothers at the
6-week interview and fathers at the 1-year interview from the Pacific Islands
Families (PIF) Birth Cohort Study
*Eligible through the Pacific Islands ethnicity of
their partner.
Altogether, 999 of the mothers interviewed at 12 months had
partners who met eligibility criteria to act as collateral respondents, of whom
825 (83%) were interviewed. Father’s mean age was 32.1 years (SD 7.3
years) and selected characteristics also appear in Table 1. At the 2-year
interview, 938 mothers had eligible partners of whom 757 (81%) consented and
completed the interview.
The type and frequency of maternal and paternal physical
punishment of children within the cohort at ages 1-year, 2-year, and 4-year
postpartum is presented in Table 2. Apparent from Table 2 is the high prevalence
and age dependency of physical punishment. Overall, 21.5%, 52.0%, and 77.1% of
mothers reported smacking at least monthly their child aged 1-year, 2-years, and
4-years respectively, while 24.4% and 78.4% of fathers smacked at least monthly
their child aged 1-year and 2-years.
Many parents also used an object (such as a spoon or belt)
to hit their child. Overall, 0.2%, 6.6%, and 24.3% of mothers reported hitting
their child with an object at least monthly aged 1-year, 2-years, and 4-years,
respectively, while 1.3% and 13.2% of fathers hit their child with an object at
least monthly aged 1-year and 2-years.
At age 1 year, smacking and hitting prevelances were
comparable between mothers and fathers. However, by 2 years of age, fathers were
approximately 1.5 times more likely to smack and 2 times more likely to hit
their child with an object at least monthly than mothers.
Table 2. The type and frequency of mothers and
fathers physical punishment of children within the cohort at ages 1-year,
2-year, and 4-year postpartum
 The concordance in the physical punishment measures used at
least monthly between parents is presented in Table 3. There was poor agreement
in adopted punishment measured used between parents on children aged 1 year and
2 years. However, there was significant asymmetry, with fathers more likely to
employ harsher physical punishment than mothers at both 1 year and 2 years of
age.
Table 3. Concordance in the physical punishment
measures used at least monthly between parents for children aged 1 years and 2
years
 DiscussionWhile difficult to directly compare, due to the
age-dependant nature of smacking, the prevalence of smacking found in this study
was broadly similar to the 80% receiving physical punishment during childhood
reported from the predominantly European/Pākehā Dunedin
Multidisciplinary Health and Development
Study,14 and the attitudes of
80%12 and
87%13 respondents from New Zealand population
surveys reported earlier. However, these results do not support the previously
noted findings that Pacific people were significantly less likely than NZ
European/Other respondents to think that it was acceptable to physically
discipline children,12 nor does it support the
commonly accepted view that physical punishment (often to extreme levels) is a
‘norm’ for Pacific people.15,16
In this cohort, 20.5% of mothers and 24.4% of fathers were
smacking their Pacific children at 1 year of age compared to NZ European/Other
(25%) and Pacific (13%) respondents who found it acceptable to physically
discipline children under 2 years. Furthermore, we found 77.1% of mothers of
4-year-old children and 78.4% of fathers of 2-year old children disciplined
these children by smacking, considerably higher than the NZ European/Other (66%)
and Pacific (31%) respondents who found it acceptable to physically discipline
children 2–5 years of age.
The difference between the prevalence estimates found here
and those previously reported may reflect the potentially large differences
between population attitudes and parental behaviours, and the broad age range
used in the survey as opposed to the actual age of discipline used in this
study.
Despite the majority public view against the use of an
object to hit a child,18 13.2% of 2 year olds
in this cohort had already been hit by their father and 24.3% of 4 year olds hit
by their mother—a figure not far short of the 27% of Pacific people who
think that disciplining with a wooden spoon or belt should be legally allowable
reported earlier.12 Perhaps more perplexing is
that some children were being physically punished by mothers and fathers with an
object as early as 1 year of age—a finding unlikely to be limited to
Pacific children.
As physical punishment is age-dependent, it is likely that
more children within this cohort will be subject to this form of punishment in
the future and, if left unchecked, perhaps approach the 45% experiencing hitting
and 6% reporting extreme physical punishment as the most severe form of
childhood discipline reported by adult participants from the Dunedin
Multidisciplinary Health and Development
Study.14
A significant finding in this study was the poor agreement
between parents in punishment administered to children aged 1 year and 2 years
within families. We could find no other studies directly investigating the
concordance between mothers and fathers in disciplining their child.
Furthermore, we demonstrated that (at both 1 year and 2 years of age)
significantly more fathers administered harsher physical punishment compared to
mothers.
While intuitively plausible, our reported behaviour findings
appear contrary to the cross-sectional attitudinal results reported elsewhere
(where women found it more acceptable than men to physically punish children
less than two years, yet men were more accepting than women to physically punish
children 6–10 and 11–14 years).12
The lack of agreement in reported behaviour between parents
might imply that parents’ punishment choice is frequently based on each
individual’s discretion, rather than on a uniform consensus strategy
arranged between both parents. Alternatively, one parent may take a more
physical stance to punishment while the other uses non-physical or different
approaches—a balance perhaps explicitly negotiated or implicitly assumed
within the parents’ relationship.
While the Pacific Islands Families Study has many strengths
(including being a large representative cohort with a relatively small and
non-differential attrition rate to date,21 and
using reliable standardised scales for
punishment23), it also has weaknesses.
Arguably, the most important limitation is reliance on
self-reports of discipline behaviors which may be subject to recall and social
desirability biases. That is, respondents may forget or report behaviours in a
way they believe to be socially acceptable or appropriate rather than accurate.
However, we believe the repeated face-to-face home interviews undertaken by
Pacific gender-matched interviewers should minimise these biases, compared to
those recognised using other sampling
techniques.12
Another important limitation is that smacking is not defined
within the Parent Behavior Checklist (PBC) and may be inconsistently interpreted
between parents. For instance, some parents may not consider a single light
open-handed blow to the back of a child’s hand as smacking whereas others
may; some parents may regard close-fisted hitting or punching as smacking
whereas others may not. Thus, without a clearly articulated definition,
systematic biases may be inherent within our reported estimates of smacking that
limits their utility.
Lastly, due to acculturation and assimilation of immigrant
Pacific people within New Zealand, it is unlikely that the study results are
generalisable to Pacific people resident elsewhere.
Most parents here and elsewhere reported having been smacked
and using smacking for child discipline. The majority of the public are
accepting of this form of discipline. Based on USA data, it has been argued that
a normal range of “spanking” frequencies by non-abusive parents is
between 0 to 5.73 times/day, with mean 2.5
times/day.25 Are we conflating smacking with
physical violence, injury or abuse or are they separate
phenomena?4
If we want to use the current consensus of the New Zealand
public to establish boundaries on the
assault-continuum,20 then it would seem they
are separate and that smacking is acceptable. If this so, then we believe that
guidelines for legally acceptable corporal punishment, similar to those issued
by the Canadian Supreme Court,19 are necessary
in establishing where police complaints and prosecutions should begin. Although
we acknowledge that the establishment of guidelines can, in itself, be
problematic,18 and that some see describing how
to hit a child safely as being absurd26 and
sending out the wrong public message.8
Perhaps no form of physical punishment should be tolerated
within our society? Certainly, such a move would be politically unpopular and
public views would require changing. Introduction of new legislation is, by
itself, unlikely to affect such a change. Although commonly cited, the 1979
legal reform in Sweden which banned physical punishment did not affect public
attitudes.27
Despite the lack of consistent, strong, compelling evidence
for the harmful consequences of smacking, we believe that the administration of
this disciplinary measure should be minimised and used sparingly (if at all).
However, in our opinion, more widespread efforts to teach parents positive
parent management strategies will go considerably farther in promoting optimal
child development and health than exhorting parents to stop smacking.
Competing interests: None.
Author information: Philip J Schluter,
Professor of Biostatistics1,2;
Gerhard Sundborn, Research Fellow in Pacific
Health1; Max Abbott, Pro Vice-Chancellor and
Dean1; Janis Paterson, Associate Professor and
Co-Director, Pacific Islands Families: First Two Years of Life
Study1;
Acknowledgements: The
Pacific Islands Families (PIF) Study is supported by grants awarded from the
Foundation for Science, Research and Technology, the Health Research Council of
New Zealand, and the Maurice and Phyllis Paykel Trust. The authors also
gratefully acknowledge the families who participated in the study, the Pacific
Peoples Advisory Board, and the other members of the PIF research team.
Correspondence: Professor Philip Schluter,
Faculty of Health & Environmental Sciences, AUT University, Private Bag
92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. Fax: +64 (0)9 921 9877; email: philip.schluter@aut.ac.nz
References:
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