Psychological Violence

Since I last mentioned it here, the “anti-smacking bill” has… well, stayed in exactly the same place. The public by a large majority is unhappy with the prospect of the bill, the religious right is leading the protests and making much hay, the whole thing is being roundly misrepresented in the the media and it is the Big Subject Of The Day. Still.
I remain a supporter of the bill, while also appreciating arguments that pushing through any legislation in the face of 80% public opposition is writing for yourselves an electoral unpopularity cheque.
(Handy tip: if you are reading a letter to the editor, column, blog post or so on in which it is specified that the Bill was initiated by a Green List MP, then you can safely skip the rest as it will be a rant against the Greenies and the socialist left sourced entirely in our local version of right-wing talking points.)
I’d like, however, to respond to a claim I’ve seen in a few places by those opposing the bill, most recently over at Span’s place but in other places as well. This is a claim that runs, in general form:
* non-physical forms of corrective punishment (such as time out) are bullying
* they are also psychologically risky and potentially damaging to a child’s self-esteem
* these dangers are more serious than the temporary impact of a corrective smack
To which I say, nonsense. I’ll go further; I think this is a specific, planned kind of nonsense that originates in the U.S. religious right’s spin machine.
Whether true or not, it’s effective rhetoric, turning the liberal sensibilities of those opposed to physical correction against themselves by insisting that psychological wellbeing also be respected. It is the left that usually worries about mental health and understands humans as vulnerable beings; the right is founded on an ideology that frames psychological damage as a failure of will. Secondly, it plays on concerns over power imbalance, another theme of a liberal worldview.
This piece of rhetoric encourages the left to consider its position as both psychologically costly and heedless of power dynamics. This double-whammy is very effective and when I have seen it come up in arguments it seems to be ignored, or perhaps acknowledged but called a side issue. It is rarely if ever tackled head-on. It is proving very useful for those arguing against repeal of section 59 here, just as it has proved useful in similar arguments over physical punishment in other places.
I find it hard to believe that something this effective arose spontaneously. No, I’d put even money on this being a carefully crafted piece of counterpropaganda, put together by a media team in a U.S. thinktank.
Also, did I say already that it’s nonsense?
However, this isn’t to say that non-violent parental correction can’t be psychologically damaging. It can be. You can mess up your kid for life without ever lifting a finger, if you dominate them or neglect them. But non-violent correction techniques, those that make up the basics of good parenting, don’t do these things. “Time out”, the naughty step, and so on and so forth, are not psychologically harmful. In fact, that’s the whole point of them. Any claim that they are is simple nonsense.
Physical correction isn’t necessarily harmful. It can be. A case could be made that it always is, but you’d need to argue that one. Almost everyone agrees that a corrective smack isn’t aesthetically pleasing, either. What is indisputable however is this: physical correction normalises physical violence.
In other words, there is no way you can weigh up smacking vs. time-out and say smacking is less harmful. And yet people have made exactly this claim. Such a claim is simple nonsense. There is no grounds for debate here. You can argue that smacking is not significantly more harmful; you can certainly argue that smacking is more effective; you can argue that the greater harm is balanced with a greater good. But the rhetorical ground occupied by the claim discussed above isn’t even there to be claimed.
Finally, its worth noting that a lot of people on both sides of the debate have been stacking the deck in their comparisons. For example, the ultra-rational patriach dishing out loving, corrective smacks on the behind of an errant child is being compared with the loopy liberal mother letting her child run wild, or the aggressive and repressed raging dad who won’t physically damage his child but will abuse them psychologically. (Or, the sensible parent sending an errant child to the naughty room is being compared with a young parent with anger control issues and a license to smack.) My bias may be showing but I think it’s much more common for this unfair comparison to turn up in those opposing the s59 repeal. This imbalance shows up in the ‘time out is more damaging’ nonsense, where the non-physical parent is a domineering monster and the physical parent is a restrained and sensible soul. Watch out for this stuff – it’s all over the place, making it even harder to see through the heat haze and smoke plumes and engage with what is actually being discussed.