He goes on to reference the New Zealand legislation described as "banning the smacking of children".
There's a lot Mr Watson writes here that's debatable, especially the questions of damage and of fairness, but as to our law he has his facts wrong. Our law doesn't ban smacking. That's where the hydra pops in. Let's cut off its head.
The amendment in no way outlaws smacking when, for example, it is done to minimise harm the child may be doing to herself or another.
What the amendment does is remove a defence previously in the 1961 Crimes Act of "reasonable force" in the correction of a child.
The amendment outlawed that defence for some parents who had used a riding crop or a rubber hose to deliver that "reasonable force".
There was a political failure to cauterise.
Had support for the bill borne the public face of an All Black in the way that John Kirwan has helped promote a healthy attitude towards depression, I suspect that many more would have supported it or at least understood it.
The unfortunate association of Sue Bradford's strident manner defending the bill drew attention to her. She became the subject rather than the bill's substantive usefulness.
We do have a problem of violence against children. It's not only a problem of the "lower classes", as can be inferred from the Watson article.
I was disappointed with the article's implicit endorsement of force as an appropriate remedy for misbehaviour, which helps to embed force and violence in the culture as a response to serious conflict with authority or with peers.
I'm not going to inveigh against a rare smack by a parent, simply because anyone is capable of losing it on a rough day.
But we need to realise that a smack represents parental defeat. What the child learns is that the person she most depends on and loves can suddenly overcome her with violence.
Repeat that enough times and fear of the parent gets meshed with the love that child has developed for her parent out of expectable nurturance having been given. What is troubling is that such ambivalent feelings of love mixed with fear set up patterns of learning to relate to others on that basis; a vulnerability that paradoxically fosters dependency rather than the autonomous freedom that is the hallmark of a healthy kid.
From Professor Adam Grant of the Wharton School of Finance in the US come the quoted studies (NY Times, April 13, 2014) that remind us behaviour is best shaped by praise and reward rather than punishment.
That if we want kids to behave responsibly and with empathy, compassion and generosity then the best guarantee we can have is to act accordingly ourselves.
Kids watch what we, as parents and teachers do.
It's not the words (unless they're punitive and degrading words - another form of abuse) they listen to. It's the music and the dance steps they follow.
