Member

The current law recognises children and adults are different. The amendment fails to consider the unique relationship between parents and their children. Children are not adults. Parents do all kinds of things to care for, train and protect their children that they would never do with an adult. If a parent confiscates their child’s phone or sends them to their room, it is not treated as theft or false imprisonment. An adult cannot place another adult on the “naughty step”. Nobody claims the child is being treated “unequally”. It is foolish and wrong to say that the relationship between a parent and child must be treated in law as identical to the relationship between two adults. Criminalising reasonable chastisement represents a fundamental shift in the legal relationship between parents and children, undermining the ability of parents to guard and guide their children.