Swedish expert shocked by NZ's tradition of violence

Psychologist My Wilkstedt. Photo / Supplied

When Swedish psychology student My Wilkstedt arrived at Otago University a decade ago, it wasn't only the fact that her friends had been smacked that upset her. "I was actually quite shocked," she says.

But rugby upset her too.

"I really couldn't watch it," she says from Malmo, near Stockholm, where she now works for the Swedish Corrections Service. "Let's face it, it's a violent game."

And then there was the drinking. "Young people are drinking a lot more out of control in New Zealand than they are here."

After eight-and-a-half years in New Zealand, and now two years back in Sweden, 31-year-old Wilkstedt believes "toughness" runs deep in Kiwi culture.

"It's very hard to put your finger on it," she says.

"But I think there is this feeling about managing on your own and being a hard, tough person, especially for men - being quite independent and managing on your own without asking for help, and not showing your weak side and not talking about your feelings."

New Zealand's first Children's Commissioner, Dr Ian Hassall, believes this tough culture affects the way we bring up children.

"We are harsh with our children," he says. "We are part of an Anglo-Saxon tradition in that."

When Unicef ranked 25 developed countries for child wellbeing two years ago, New Zealand children came out second-worst.

Kiwi children were worst off for accidental deaths and injuries, second-worst for teenage pregnancies and for 15-year-olds who ate the main daily meal with their parents, fourth-worst for child poverty and infants dying in their first year of life, and sixth-worst for child deaths from maltreatment.

Bob McCoskrie, whose Family First lobby group leads the campaign for a "No" vote, says the new law could actually increase violence by undermining "good parents", just as doing away with corporal punishment in schools in 1990 undermined teachers' authority.

"They did away with it. Schools got more violent. Society got more violent," he says.

The law

The 2007 Sue Bradford amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act allows parents to use force to stop children doing something wrong or dangerous, but specifically not for "correction".

Although the word "smack" does not appear in the law, the amendment effectively bans smacking because a smack is generally used for correction - to teach a child a lesson after doing something wrong, not to actually stop the wrongdoing.

The context

In a famous exchange in 2005, McCoskrie, then a breakfast host on Radio Rhema, asked Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark whether she supported a ban on smacking.

Clark replied: "Absolutely not, I think you are trying to defy human nature."

The use of force runs deep and wide in human experience. British health researcher Richard Wilkinson reaches back to pre-human origins, noting that baboons and chimpanzees fight to establish their rankings in "dominance hierarchies". More recently, he notes the widespread use of torture in medieval times.

Internationally, the World Health Organisation quotes a study of five countries asking mothers whether they had smacked their children on the bottom in the previous six months. It found that 29 per cent had done so in Egypt, 47 per cent in the United States, 51 per cent in Chile, 58 per cent in India and 75 per cent in the Philippines.

Today's Herald survey found that 34 per cent of New Zealand mothers of 4-year-olds smack their children at least once a month, and 61 per cent at least once a year.

Wilkstedt, in her 2005 masters study, compared parenting practices in New Zealand and Sweden. In one of five scenarios, the psychologist asked parents of 3- to 8-year-olds how they would deal with a petulant child who refused to get dressed.

Both Swedish and New Zealand parents started with low-authority responses or verbal yelling at them, she found.

"But then it escalates into something else, more commonly in New Zealand, [into] behaviour modification, as in 'time out'."

Physical punishment such as smacking was more common in New Zealand too, making up 6 per cent of parents' mentions across the five scenarios. No Swedish parents mentioned physical punishment at all.

But smacking was only part of generally tougher parenting in New Zealand. Kiwi parents were more likely to use behaviour modification such as time out or withdrawing privileges (34 per cent, against 15 per cent in Sweden), and "coercive verbal control" such as telling off and threats (38 per cent, against 26 per cent in Sweden).

In contrast, Swedish parents were far more likely to use "low authority" techniques such as requests, distractions and offering rewards later (39 per cent, against just 8 per cent in NZ).

Moreover, on a set of 32 statements testing parents' attitudes to children, Kiwi parents were less tolerant and less protective of their children. They were more likely to say that children should not question the parents' decisions or interrupt adult conversations, and that their children should "fight their own battles" and "sort it out themselves" if they're teased.

Wilkstedt says this was partly because of differences in the ages when children start school - 5 in New Zealand but 7 in Sweden.

"In Sweden, children are seen very much as children until they are 7," she says.