The Reality of Child Abuse

 

In his latest column, Xerxes the Leftarian condemns “punishment-based systems”—he cites English public schools—and congratulate the Canadian government on Bill S-251, which apparently will criminalize spanking.

I’m not sure whether he is opposing all punishment, or only physical punishments. 

Let’s first deal with punishment in general first:

If punishment is wrong intrinsically, then having laws and a police force and a prison system must be wrong. We should instead simply point out to criminals that their behaviour is undesirable, and all will be well. After all, they are old enough to understand. Pity, too, nobody tried that with Hitler.

Surely that would not work. So why would it work with children?

Moreover, so long as you give kids marks in school, or allow them to play sports, you have a punishment-based system: students who do not do the work, or even are simply less mentally capable, are punished by being shamed, often publicly shamed, with low marks. Kids who can’t skate or swing as well lose the game, and mess up in front of friends, family, perhaps an audience of strangers. Yet we need to have marks in school; we mustn’t think of abolishing grades. For one thing, it is the only way to know whether anything useful is happening in a school. For another, for the same reason that we need specific training and qualifications for someone who is going to work as a doctor, or a child-care worker, or a plumber. Competence is an objective quality. And we need to teach children for the real world, the world they will live in; we cannot keep them babies forever. Children need to know whether they are doing the right thing, and whether they are doing well or badly. They do not know by instinct. To leave them without guidance is the ultimate cruelty. 

You might argue, “Oh, but make it a rewards-only system.” That cannot work, any more than you can have up without down.  Give out any sort of reward, and, unless you give to everyone, the absence of the reward remains damning.

So perhaps Xerxes is objecting to corporal punishment specifically. I suspect so. I suspect he means to assert that this is somehow worse than emotional punishment, say: such as causing a child to feel shame, perhaps in front of fellows or parents, or sending him to his room to brood alone, or making him write something on the blackboard 100 times.

But think about it. Why is it worse? Surely only if you hold the body, the physical, to be more important than the spiritual. This would seem to reverse the proper valences: we should be teaching our children not that their bodies, but their character and their conscience, are the most important of their possessions.

This is actually in part what the tradition of spanking or the like does. It teaches the child not to overvalue their physical comfort, and teaches physical courage. There is the usual revelation; “that didn’t hurt that much.” It is an important lesson, and reduces unnecessary fear forever after.

Even if you do not consider the Bible sacred, it is nevertheless the repository of thousands of years of acquired wisdom. It does not speak out against physical punishment of children. In fact, Proverbs 13:24 says: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”

Chesterton’s warning applies here: do not tear down an old fence because you do not know why it is there. Tear it down only if you know exactly why it is there—and can be sure it is no longer needed.

While seeing no problem with striking a child even with a rod, the Bible does condemn child abuse. And sternly:

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!”

This is child abuse—not something so trivial as a spanking. It is misleading a child; gaslighting them. 

To characterise spanking as “child abuse” or “bullying” is the perfect way to conceal and enable this real child abuse: either not teaching children moral values, giving them no guidance, teaching them false values, or forcing or encouraging them to go against their conscience.

Like teaching them their body is sacred, but not their soul.