Parents in England and Northern Ireland should be banned from hitting their children because it is unfair, dangerous and harmful, leading doctors have urged government ministers. It is a “scandal” that Scotland and Wales have already outlawed child abuse, but the other two countries are not cracking down on it, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has said.
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Beating children affects their mental health, they do poorly at school, they are hurt or vice versa – they themselves are violent, the doctors added, condemning this practice as a “complete violation of children’s rights”. As The Guardian writes on this topic, doctors consider it absurd that parents in England and Northern Ireland can claim that hitting their child is “reasonable punishment”, as the current law allows. “They create a gray area where some forms of corporal punishment may be legal and some are not.”
Paediatricians want to change the law before the general election later this year, “all political parties should include these pledges in their programmes!” In England and Northern Ireland, children are still subject to a legal loophole that can compromise their fundamental right to protection.
Children who have been violently affected by a parent come to clinics in Manchester every week. “I see children who are physically punished with a slap or sometimes with some instrument. Children have been hit on the leg, arm, back or bottom. I have seen children with injuries from kitchen utensils – spoons, or phone, laptop charger cords. Thus, the child may need medical help after a severe bruise or open wound, or even because of a fracture,” the publication writes.
Bess Herbert, of the Campaign to End Corporal Punishment, said “hundreds of studies” had found that as well as mental harm, the harm caused by beatings can include poorer cognitive development, a higher risk of dropping out of school, aggression and violence in adults and anti-social behaviour.
Sixty-five countries in the world have banned hitting children, 27 have pledged to do the same. Rowland points out that England and Northern Ireland are out of step internationally.
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