Should we hit our children?

The Maori Party today decided to support Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill which means that it may go through to become law.

See: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/070313/3/5nw.html

I thought it was about time that I gave my views on this issue. Personally I am against hitting children at all. You get many people around the country, especially those of the older generation, saying that a little smack won't hurt them. In this country we can't hit another adult - we'd be up for assault. You can't hit an animal - you'd have the SPCA and animal cruelty people after you. Then why can we hit our children? Our children our quite defenseless so why do we treat them this way?

But then you get those people who say "One little smack every now and then won't hurt". Yeah right! All alcoholics took that first drink, all drug addicts smoked that first joint, and all child abusers did that first smack!

Now I don't know if we really need a law to tell us whether we can smack our kids or not - perhaps we do. Or there could be a much better way - there could be more education for parents about other ways to discipline children. Smacking or hitting our children is not the way to go. There are many other ways which parents can be taught. It can be done and it can work.

Let's not hit our children anymore. Hitting anyone, it doesn't matter what age they are, is a form of assault, and is wrong. Just because children are young and defenseless doesn't mean that they don't have rights too.