Happy, birthday! Now I can whack you...

Can’t you just imagine it? The happy anticipation of party and gifts as the days wind down. That magic day, my birthday, finally arrives — and then the terrible surprise? The toddler leaps out of bed, face beaming, to be created by an equally gleeful parent. “Happy birthday!” exclaims the parent. “Now our wise lawmakers have decreed you are of an age when pain infliction can be added to my armoury of child management techniques. So take note! You have a new disciplinary regime from now on.” Grotesque isn’t it? Yet, that parody may well be the case if Section 59 is only amended by Parliament later in the year. Age restrictions limiting a parent’s right to use physical punishment in disciplining a child is a common feature of those jurisdictions which have amended rather than repealed the statutory defence. Typically, you can’t hit the child before the age of two or three. After all it would be child abuse to hit a baby or toddler, wouldn’t it? At the other end of the age range, it would be degrading punishment and flagrant assault of an adult to hit a young person over the age of 14 years. This leaves the youngsters in between unprotected by the law. Why? So that the law continues to protect those parents who believe that physical punishment is necessary to effective child rearing. It only takes a moment’s reflection to realise the absurdity of it all. Two years and three hundred and sixty four days old and the child is untouchable. The next morning, hey presto, the required maturity has been reached. And it is not just the age restriction which is inherently absurd. The other common amendment is defining which body parts can be hit legally. But even that doesn’t work well. Obviously, even a light smack would be dangerous for the haemophiliac child irrespective of age or body part struck. But what of the child of nervous disposition? Or the child recovering from some social or family-related trauma? Or the intellectually impaired child? Or the child with Aspergers syndrome? The list goes on. Amendment has a superficial plausibility which is attractive to politicians wanting “a bob each way”. But they end up satisfying neither the pro-repealers nor the anti-repealers. Nor do they produce good law as the sheer impracticality of amending Section 59 centres on the failure to appreciate that every child is different.