The other big noise around NZ lately has been the progress of Green MP Sue Bradford’s “anti-smacking bill”, which essentially outlaws the physical disciplining of children.
\nThis has, predictably, kicked up a righteous hullaballoo. The hardcore fundy Christians hate the attack on their God-imposed responsibility to smack their children into obedience and love. Libertarians are upset that the state is going to tell them how they have to raise their children. Everyone agrees that, for those parents who kill their children, this legislation isn’t going to provide much disincentive.
\nI support the bill. I don’t have kids, so I can’t speak to the difficulties of parenting and discipline. But I know this – I have on many occasions watched as some mother or father laid down a mighty load of smacking on a misbehaving child. Furious, stressed parents at the end of their tether, trying to just get through their shopping and go home, who smack down their children, hard. Every time I have witnessed this kind of display, I have felt sickened, and also helpless.
\nThis kind of treatment is unacceptable. If the bill passes into law, then it will also be illegal.
\nThe other issues are sideshows. The real concern is this kind of physical beating of unruly children, which happens every day, all over this country. I welcome this legislation as a step in pushing such behaviour beyond the pale, where it belongs.
\n—
\nThis is turning into “issues week”. Gosh, which pressing ethical conundrum shall I glibly solve tomorrow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other big noise around NZ lately has been the progress of Green MP Sue Bradford’s “anti-smacking bill”, which essentially outlaws the physical disciplining of children. This has, predictably, kicked up a righteous hullaballoo. The hardcore fundy Christians hate the attack on their God-imposed responsibility to smack their children into obedience and love. Libertarians are … Continue reading Talking Smack<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-84","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}