Spanking is Violence in the Netherlands now.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_...story_id=16923

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb
"
Parents banned from smacking children


14 February 2005

AMSTERDAM - In a proposal that will ban the giving of disciplinary
smacks, the Dutch Cabinet has decided to outlaw all forms of violence
against children to combat child abuse.

Cabinet ministers decided on Friday that parents will in future be
explicitly obligated by law to care for their children and to raise
them without emotional or physical violence.

.....more at the available links.....

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb

[[[ Some interesting thinking in this law and it's creation ]]]

Breaches of regulations can lead to supervision from welfare
authorities or the loss of custody. In more serious cases, culprits can
be jailed at the order of a court.

In several other European countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Germany
and Austria - where all forms of violence against children is a
criminal offence - evidence is starting to be gathered indicating
that the law leads to a reduction in the number of child abuse cases.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb

Notice the outcomes.....indications that the law leads to reduction in
the number of child abuse cases.

Kane

Anti-spanking zealotS always claimed that banning spanking will reduce
child abuse. But where is the evidence?

Doan


Begin include
Two recent reviews of parental corporal punishment have found little sound
evidence of detrimental child outcomes such as child aggression. This paper
explores whether the 1979 Swedish law against all corporal punishment has
reduced their child abuse. Sweden's 1979 law was welcomed by many as a much
needed policy toward reducing physical child abuse. Surprisingly, this
search located only five published studies with any relevant data. The best
study found that the rate of child abuse was 49% higher in Sweden than in
the United States, comparing a 1980 Swedish national survey with the average
rates from two national surveys in the United States in 1975 and 1985. By
comparison, a retrospective survey of university students in 1981 found that
the Swedish child abuse rate was 21% of the USA rate in the 1960s and the
1970s, prior to the anti-spanking law. More recent Swedish data indicate a
489% increase in one child abuse statistic from 1981 through 1994, as well
as a 672% increase in assaults by minors against minors. The article discusses
possible reasons for this apparent increase in child abuse and calls for
better evaluations of innovative policies intended to reduce societal abuse
and violence.

Poster presented at the XXVI International Congress of Psychology, Montreal,
August 18, 1996.

Where is Evidence That Non-Abusive Corporal Punishment
Increases Aggression?

Two recent reviews of the literature on parental corporal punishment have
found few methodologically sound studies. Further, hardly any of the soundest
studies found detrimental child outcomes associated with corporal punishment.
This paper explores whether there is evidence that the outlawing of corporal
punishment by parents in Sweden and other countries has had any discernible
effect, particularly on child abuse and, to a lesser degree, on child outcomes
such as aggression.

Lyons, Anderson, and Larson (1993) attempted to review all journal articles on
corporal punishment by parents from 1984 through 1993. Only 24 of the 132
articles (17%) included any empirical data on corporal punishment. Less than
half of those (11) investigated corporal punishment as a possible cause of
some other variable. Most (83%) of the studies were cross-sectional, and only
one made any attempt to exclude child abuse from the measure of corporal
punishment.

They concluded that there was empirical evidence supporting one of three
hypotheses: Several studies found that parents were more likely to use corporal
punishment themselves if their parents had used it. There was no sound evidence
that corporal punishment was ineffective, nor that it was associated with child
aggression.

Larzelere (in press) built on their review by extending the search of peer-
reviewed articles to the period 1974 to 1995 plus older articles that met the
inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were designed to exclude studies
that were cross-sectional or whose measures emphasized the severity of usage
of corporal punishment. Only 18 studies were found that both met the two
inclusion criteria and limited the sample to children under 13 years of age.
The 8 strongest studies found beneficial outcomes of corporal punishment,
usually in 2- to 6-year-olds. The 10 other studies were prospective (6) or
retrospective (4). Three of them found detrimental outcomes, but only 1 of
those 3 made any attempt to exclude abuse from its measure of corporal
punishment. Further, none of the 10 studies controlled for the initial level
of child misbehavior. This seems to be an important methodological problem,
since the frequency of every type of discipline response tends to be
positively associated with child misbehavior, whether the associations are
cross-sectional or longitudinal (Larzelere, Sather, Schneider, Larson, & Pike,
1996; Larzelere, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, in press). Finally, no alternative
discipline response in any of the 18 studies was associated with more
beneficial child outcomes than was corporal punishment, whereas 7 alternatives
were associated with more detrimental child outcomes, mostly in 2- to
6-year-olds. These reviews suggest that the empirical linkage between
nonabusive corporal punishment and aggression comes only from cross-sectional
studies, studies of teenagers, studies measuring particularly severe forms
of corporal punishment, and, perhaps, studies of punitiveness. This led us
to ask how well current societal experiments are working in countries that
have outlawed all forms of parental use of corporal punishment.

In 1979, Sweden passed a law prohibiting all corporal punishment by parents.
This was hailed as a crucial step in the effort to reduce child abuse (Deley,
1988; Feshbach, 1980; Ziegert, 1983). Several countries have passed similar
laws since then (Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Cyprus), and
organizations have formed to advocate against parental corporal punishment
throughout the world (e.g., End Physical Punishment of Children [EPOCH]: Radda
Barnen, no date).

This movement represents one of the most sweeping changes ever advocated by
social scientists. In the United States, for example, about 90% of parents
have spanked their 3-year-old children in the past year (Straus, 1983;
Wauchope & Straus, 1990). Some social scientific research has been used to
support the anti-spanking position (e.g., Hyman, 1995; Straus, 1994), but the
reviews summarized above have found such support coming primarily from
methodologically poor studies. Given the inconclusiveness of relevant research
and the importance of the issue, it is desirable to know whether child abuse
has decreased in Sweden following their 1979 anti-spanking law. Accordingly,
this article asks two inter-related questions: (1) To what extent have social
scientists evaluated the effect of the 1979 anti-spanking law in Sweden, and
(2) what do those evaluations indicate about the effects of the anti-spanking
law in reducing child abuse? We also report one finding about Swedish trends
in assaults by minors discovered during our study.

Literature Search for Evaluations

Two procedures were used to find evaluations of the effects of Sweden's anti-
spanking law. First, PsycLit was searched from 1974 through June of 1995 for
all publications that included "Sweden" or "Swedish" and either "punishment"
or "spanking" in their abstracts. Second, Social Sciences Citation Index was
used to identify all articles citing Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) through April
1995, because their study reported a well-done survey of Swedish child abuse
rates one year after the anti-spanking law was passed.

Empirical Evaluations of Sweden's Anti-Spanking Law

Five published studies and one unpublished paper were found that included any
empirical information relevant for evaluating the 1979 anti-spanking law.
Ziegert (1983) published a conceptual, preliminary article on why the law
should be effective. His only empirical data was from a Swedish opinion poll
showing that the percentage of respondents considering corporal punishment
to be necessary had dropped from 53% in 1965 to 35% in 1971 to 26% in 1979 and
1981. In an article comparing Swedish and American use of corporal punishment,
Solheim (1982) reported that 26% of Swedish respondents considered corporal
punishment necessary in 1978. Like Ziegert (1983), Solheim's (1982) article
was mostly nonempirical, discussing such issues as court decisions about
corporal punishment in schools, the 1979 law, and expert opinions. Together
these two articles show that the decline in support for the necessity of
parental corporal punishment in Sweden preceded the 1979 law, and it did not
decrease thereafter, at least through 1981.

A third article reported the rate of child homicides in various European
countries, comparing 1973/1974 with approximately 1987/1988 (Pritchard, 1992).
Note that this compared statistics before and after the 1979 law. The Swedish
child homicide rate was the sixth lowest of the 17 countries at both time
periods. However, it nearly doubled from 1973/1974 to 1986/1987. Sweden's
93% increase in its child homicide rate was the fifth largest percentage
increase among the 17 countries. It should also be noted that the rate of
accidental baby deaths in Sweden was the lowest of the 17 countries at both
time periods. Unlike the child homicide rate, it decreased by 67%
between the two time periods, although 10 of the other 16 countries decreased
their accidental baby death rates by an even larger percentage.

A fourth article compared child abuse rates among university students at one
Swedish university compared to one American university as reported in a 1981
survey (Deley, 1988). Because these were retrospective reports, they were
child abuse rates during the 1960s and the 1970s as these students were growing
up, a time period preceding the 1979 law. The critical question asked whether
a spanking had ever left physical marks that lasted for more than 10 minutes.
Two percent of the Sweden students reported receiving such physical marks from
a spanking, compared to 9.5% of the American students. Although this is far
from a representative sample, this suggests that the child abuse rate in
Sweden was only 21% of the American child abuse rate in the 1960s and 1970s
(i.e., 2.0 divided by 9.5 = .21).

The fifth and best study used telephone surveys of a nationally representative
sample of Swedish parents to measure the rates of spanking and of child abuse
in 1980 (Gelles & Edfeldt, 1986). It used the Conflict Tactics Scale, which
was also used to measure the prevalence of spanking and child abuse in two
National Family Violence Surveys in the USA (Straus & Gelles, 1986; Straus,
Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) compared their 1980
Swedish survey only with the 1975 National Family Violence Survey. They
concluded that a smaller percentage of parents were spanking their children in
Sweden than in the United States, but that there were no significant
differences in child abuse rates.

It would have been more appropriate, however, to compare their 1980 Swedish
survey with the 1985 National Family Violence Survey in the USA (Straus &
Gelles, 1986), which reported a 47% lower rate of child abuse in the United
States than in 1975. For one thing, the 1980 Swedish survey was closer to the
1985 USA survey in its method, because both used telephone interviews. In
contrast, the 1975 USA survey used face-to-face interviews. Table 1 gives the
percentage of Swedish and United States parents reporting the use of various
forms of physical aggression in both national surveys in the United States and
the national survey in Sweden. In contrast to Gelles & Edfeldt (1986), we
report whether the Swedish rate was significantly different from the mean USA
rate from both the 1975 and the 1985 surveys. This approach represents a
compromise on the issue of which USA survey is the most appropriate comparison,
and it assumes that the 1980 rates in the USA might have been halfway between
the 1975 and the 1985 rates.


Table 1 Prevalence Rates of Various Forms of Physical Child Abuse in the
United States and Sweden
__________________________________________________ ____________________

United States
Sweden
Type of Violence 1975 1985 1980

1. Threw things at 5.4% 2.7% 3.6%
2. Pushed, grabbed, or shoved 40.5 30.7 49.4***
3. Hit (spanked or slapped) 58.2 54.9 27.5***
4. Kicked, bit, or hit with fist 3.2 1.3 2.2
5. Hit with an object (*1) 13.4 9.7 2.4***
6. Beat up 1.3 .6 3.0***
7. Threatened with a weapon .1 .2 .4
8. Used a weapon .1 .2 .4
Very Severe Violence (4, 6-8) 3.6 1.9 4.0*

__________________________________________________ ______________________
1 In the United States this item referred to attempted or completed
hits. In Sweden, the item referred only to completed hits. The 1975
and 1980 surveys are taken from Gelles & Edfeldt (1986) and the 1985
survey from Straus & Gelles (1986).
*p .05, 2-tailed t-test of proportions, comparing the combined USA
samples with the Swedish sample.
***p .001, same test.


As can be seen, significantly fewer Swedish parents spanked or hit their child
with an object, compared to USA parents. Nonetheless, 27% of Swedish parents
reported spanking or slapping their child in the past year, reflecting
imperfect compliance with the law. In contrast, most of the more serious types
of physical aggression occurred more often in Sweden one year after passing the
anti-spanking law than they did in the United States. The rate of beating a
child up was three times as high in Sweden as in the United States, the rate
of using a weapon was twice as high, and the overall rate of Very Severe
Violence was 49% higher in Sweden than the United States average from the 1975
and 1985 surveys. Except for weapon usage, all of these differences were
significantly different using a test of differences between proportions (Downie
& Heath, 1974, chap. 13), p .05. In addition, the rate of pushing, grabbing,
or shoving was 39% higher in Sweden than the average rate in the United States,
p .001. Thus, the rate of spanking was significantly lower in Sweden than in
the United States, but the rate of other forms of physical aggression,
including child abuse, was significantly higher in Sweden than in the United
States.

Because there were so few published studies with relevant empirical data, we
also included an unpublished field study by Haeuser (1988) and sought
additional data from Swedish sources. As co-founder of EPOCH-USA, an
organization advocating the banning of all corporal punishment in the
United States, Haeuser (1988) explicitly wanted to "promote positive visibility
of this Swedish law in the U.S. and garner U.S. support for the possibility of
promoting U.S. parenting norms which avoid physical punishment" (p. 2). Her
paper was based on her 1981 and 1988 field visits to Sweden, using extensive
interviews of 7 parents and 60 personnel in government, health and human
services, and schools.

In the summary, she concluded, "Most, if not all, believe the law has not
affected the incidence of child abuse" (p. iii). Specifically, she reported
that concerns about sexual abuse and youth gang violence had superseded
concerns about physical child abuse by 1988. She also reported that she
observed toddlers and young children often hitting their parents in her 1988
visit.

According to her, "In 1981 both parents and professionals agreed that parents
had not . . . found constructive alternatives to physical punishment [within
the two years since the law was passed]. For most parents the alternative was
yelling and screaming at their children, and some believed this was equally,
perhaps more, destructive" (p. 22). Haeuser went on to report that most Swedish
parents had developed firmer discipline techniques by 1988.

Haeuser (1988) concluded that the child abuse rate was lower in Sweden than
in the USA based on Swedish police statistics of 6.5 cases of physical child
abuse per 1000 children in 1986. Haeuser compared this to a "U. S. rate of 9.2
to 10.7" per 1000 (Haeuser, 1988, p. 34), but acknowledged, "Since the Swedish
police data omits child abuse cases known to social services but not warranting
police intervention, the actual Swedish incidence rate is probably higher"
(p. 34).

However, the American survey that she cited (National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect [NCCAN], 1988) indicated that the basis of the rate of 9.2 or 10.7 per
1000 differed from the Swedish police statistic in two ways. First, the USA
rate included sexual and emotional abuse as well as physical abuse. Second,
the USA rate included not only cases known to police, but also cases known to
at least one professional across a wide range of occupations, including those
in child protection services, public health, education (schools, daycare
centers), hospitals, mental health, and social services. If limited to only
physical abuse, the USA rate was only 4.9 or 5.7 known to at least one of
these professionals, depending upon the definition of physical child abuse. If
limited to all three kinds of abuse known specifically to police or sheriffs,
the USA rate was only 2.2 per 1000 (NCCAN, 1988).

The most relevant statistics we have obtained from Sweden are police-record
trends in physical abuse of children under 7 years of age (Wittrock, 1992,
1995). Those records showed a 489% increase in the child abuse rate from 1981
to 1994 (see Figure 1). The same police records also indicated a 672% increase
in assaults by minors against minors (under 15 in Sweden) from 1981 to
1994 (see Figure 2).

Discussion and Conclusions

Although the Swedish anti-spanking law was intended to reduce child abuse, the
best empirical study since then indicated that the rate of child abuse in
Sweden was 49% higher than in the United States one year after the anti-
spanking law was passed. Does this mean that the anti-spanking law increased
the rate of physical child abuse in Sweden? Deley's (1988) retrospective data
indicates that the Swedish physical child abuse rate was 21% of the USA rate
in the 1960s and 1970s. This suggests that the anti-spanking law not only
failed to achieve its goal of reducing child abuse, but that the child abuse
rate increased from 21% to 149% of the equivalent USA rate, a seven-fold
increase relative to the decreasing rate in the United States. We doubt that
the increase was actually that substantial, because Deley used a retrospective
measure with a small unrepresentative sample. Nonetheless, the available
evidence suggests that a sizeable increase in the Swedish child abuse rate
occurred around the time of the 1979 anti-spanking law. The other studies
indicate no changes in attitudes about corporal punishment nor in child
homicides due to the 1979 law.

Was the apparent increase in the Swedish child abuse rate only a temporary
increase following their anti-spanking law? More recent data on Swedish child
abuse rates would help answer that question. One piece of subsequent data was
the 6.5 cases of physical child abuse per 1,000 children in official 1986
Swedish police statistics, which was substantially higher than the 2.2 per
1,000 known to police or sheriffs in the USA. The other available evidence is
the sharp increase in physical child abuse in Swedish police records from 1981
through 1994, along with a similar sharp increase in certain assaults by
minors.

Why might Sweden experience an increasing child abuse rate and an increase in
assaults by minors after outlawing corporal punishment? Haeuser's (1988)
description of some parental frustration and yelling in 1981 might indicate an
increased risk of escalation to abuse at that time. This is reminiscent of
Baumrind's (1973) observation of permissive parents. Compared to authoritative
and authoritarian parents, permissive parents were the most likely to report
"explosive attacks of rage in which they inflicted more pain or injury upon
the child than they had intended. . . . Permissive parents apparently became
violent because they felt that they could neither control the child's behavior
nor tolerate its effect upon themselves" (Baumrind, 1973, p. 35). Permissive
parents used spanking less than did either authoritative or authoritarian
parents. So it could be that the prohibition of all spanking eliminates a type
of mild spanking that prevents further escalation of aggression within
discipline incidents (see Patterson's [1982] coercive family process).
Haeuser's (1988) report suggests that Swedish parents later developed new,
firm discipline responses that reduced escalations to yelling and possibly to
child abuse. But adequate data on the resulting child abuse rates are lacking.

In conclusion, the available Swedish data indicate that we cannot reduce child
abuse just by mandating that parents stop using corporal punishment. Parents
also need new, effective techniques to replace corporal punishment if it is to
be outlawed. It is even possible that mild corporal punishment may play an
important role in preventing escalation to abuse for some parents. The other
surprise is that there has been so little empirical evaluation of the effects
of Sweden's anti-spanking law. Perhaps it has seemed so obvious that
eliminating parental spanking would reduce the child abuse rate that people
have felt that no evaluation was needed. If so, this summary of available
evidence should shake us out of our premature complacency. The role of parental
discipline responses in preventing aggression in parent and child is
surprisingly complex (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Patterson, 1982; Snyder &
Patterson, 1995). We need better research to understand the complexities
involved in parental discipline, including its relationship to child abuse. We
need to discriminate effective from counterproductive forms of discipline
responses, including the role of different forms of corporal punishment in
increasing or decreasing the risk of child abuse. We also need better
evaluations of policies designed to change parental discipline, given that the
effects of the Swedish anti-spanking law seem to have had exactly the opposite
effect of its intention, at least in the short term.
End include


Doan


On 21 Feb 2005, Kane wrote:

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_...story_id=16923

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb
"
Parents banned from smacking children


14 February 2005

AMSTERDAM - In a proposal that will ban the giving of disciplinary
smacks, the Dutch Cabinet has decided to outlaw all forms of violence
against children to combat child abuse.

Cabinet ministers decided on Friday that parents will in future be
explicitly obligated by law to care for their children and to raise
them without emotional or physical violence.

....more at the available links.....

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb

[[[ Some interesting thinking in this law and it's creation ]]]

Breaches of regulations can lead to supervision from welfare
authorities or the loss of custody. In more serious cases, culprits can
be jailed at the order of a court.

In several other European countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Germany
and Austria - where all forms of violence against children is a
criminal offence - evidence is starting to be gathered indicating
that the law leads to a reduction in the number of child abuse cases.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb

Notice the outcomes.....indications that the law leads to reduction in
the number of child abuse cases.

Kane

The effect of spanking bans in Sweden:

http://4forums.com/political/showpos...ostcount=3D137
"

Thread: Is spanking a form of child abuse?
View Single Post
#137
Old 05-20-2004, 02:44 AM
mizmaxx's Avatar
mizmaxx mizmaxx is offline
Registered User

Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 830
Quote:
Originally Posted by King Triton
And it is funny how you are given proof that it failed miserably in
Sweden,but you choose to ignore the facts and spout off that only 1
study doesn`t prove anything.How about the increase in
crime,assaults,etc.

Well, since you asked- (emphasis mine)
Child Abuse in Sweden
By Joan E. Durrant, Ph.D. 1
April 9, 2003

For a number of years, various media have carried reports stating that
child abuse has increased in Sweden since the passage of the 1979
corporal punishment ban. This statement, which was recently given new
life in the Canadian Charter Challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal
Code, is completely erroneous. All available evidence indicates that
Sweden has been extremely successful in reducing rates of child
physical abuse over the past few decades and that reduction has been
maintained since the passage of the corporal punishment ban. The
purpose of this brief report is to disseminate accurate information on
this issue.

1=2E Reporting Rates vs. Rates of Actual Abuse
The claim that child abuse has increased in Sweden is primarily based
on misinterpretation of assault report statistics. It is the case that
reporting of child physical assault has increased in Sweden since the
1970s - as it has in every nation that has raised awareness of the
issue of child abuse. Reporting rates are by no means equivalent to
rates of actual abuse. They are sharp reflections of/strongly tied to
shifts in public awareness.

For example, in the early 1960s, it was estimated that about 300
children were being maltreated in the U.S. By 1990, the U.S. Advisory
Board on Child Abuse and Neglect had officially recorded 2.4 million
reported cases. By 1993, they had recorded almost 3 million cases. It
is highly unlikely that actual child maltreatment increased by a factor
of 10,000 in that period. It is also highly unlikely that only 300
children were maltreated in the U.S. in the early 1960s.

It is a well-known fact that when mandatory reporting laws, public
education campaigns, and other measures are implemented to increase
awareness, reporting will increase. This is the goal of such measures.
The Swedish reporting figures have been cited as if they are actual
rates of abuse, which they are not.

Recently the Swedish National Crime Prevention Council examined 434
cases of assaults on young children within the family that were
reported to the police in 1990 (all cases) and 1997 (every other case).
It was found that the proportion of cases involving serious injuries
sustained by children in this age range had decreased substantially.
The majority of reported assaults result in minor injuries or no
injuries at all. On the basis of an extensive analysis of the data, the
National Crime Prevention Council concluded that there has been an
increase in the propensity to report cases of assault on young
children, and that it is this increase that is responsible for most, if
not all, of the rise in the number of such offences reported to the
police@ (Nilsson, 2000, p. 68).

2=2E Prevalence of Child Physical Assault Across Time
Studies conducted at various points in time demonstrate that the
prevalence, frequency and harshness of assaults against children have
declined dramatically in Sweden over the last two generations.
Substantial proportions of women who became mothers in the 1950s struck
their children at least weekly (e.g., 55% of mothers of 4-year-old
daughters; 20% of mothers of 8-year-old sons) (Stattin et al., 1995).
Among 3- to 5-year-old children of that generation, implements were
used by 13% of mothers (Stattin et al.,1995).

In contrast, 86% of youth who were born in the 1980s report never
having been physically punished (Janson, 2001). Of those who were, the
vast majority experienced it no more than once or twice in their
childhoods (SCB, 1996). Virtually no children are hit with implements
in Sweden today.

It is important to note that legislative reform began many decades ago
in Sweden. The corporal punishment ban was the end, not the beginning,
of legal changes in that country. Most notably, the provision excusing
parents who caused minor injuries to their children through physical
punishment was repealed from the Swedish Penal Code in 1957. The
explicit ban on physical punishment was implemented 22 years later.

3=2E Child Abuse Fatalities
The incidence of homicides of children under the age of 5 can provide
an estimate of child abuse mortality, as it is these children who are
most vulnerable to fatal injury and the contribution of other forms of
external violence is minimized among this age group. Between 1975 and
2000, the average annual number of homicides of children aged 0 to 4 in
Sweden was 4. The average incidence between 1995 and 2000 (2.8) was
lower than that between 1975 and 1980 (4.0) - despite population
growth.

The World Health Organization (2002) provides homicide incidence
figures for children aged 0 to 4 in Sweden (1996), Canada (1997) and
the United States (1998).2 These figures a

Sweden: 3
Canada: 24
United States: 723

(Canada's population is approximately 3 times larger than Sweden's. The
U=2ES. population is approximately 20 times larger than Sweden's.)

Child homicides attributable specifically to physical abuse (excluding
homicide-suicides, neonaticide and postnatal depression) are virtually
non-existent in Sweden. Between 1976 and 2000 (the most recent year for
which statistics are currently available), a total of 4 children died
in Sweden as a result of physical abuse.

Summary
There is no evidence to support the claim that child abuse has
increased in Sweden since corporal punishment was banned there in 1979.
In fact, Sweden has maintained a very low rate of child abuse
internationally for more than 25 years.

Three Important Points

1=2E It is important to note that Sweden's law was intended to affirm
children's rights; it was not expected to end all abuse of children for
all time. North American assault laws have not eliminated assaults
against adults, yet we recognize their importance in setting a standard
of non-violence for the society, sending a clear message, and affording
protection to those who have been harmed. This was the fundamental
intent of Sweden's corporal punishment ban.

2=2E Legislative reform in Sweden began in 1928, when corporal punishment
was forbidden in secondary schools. It was 1957 when the legal defence
of reasonable correction was repealed from Sweden's Penal Code. The ban
must be viewed within its historical context to be understood.

3=2E Since Sweden passed its ban on corporal punishment in 1979, 10 other
nations have followed: Finland, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Cyprus,
Croatia, Latvia, Israel, Germany, and Iceland. The purpose of these
bans is to explicitly recognize children's rights to protection under
the law - the same rights that adults take for granted. In addition,
Italy's highest court has ruled that "the use of violence for
educational purposes can no longer be considered lawful."

1 Joan E. Durrant, Ph.D., is a Child-Clinical Psychologist and
Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Family Studies at the
University of Manitoba. She is an internationally recognized expert on
the Swedish ban. Over the past decade, she has conducted extensive
research on this law and has lived in Sweden for extended periods to
gain a full understanding of its history, implementation and effects.

2 Rates per population are not available for Sweden and Canada due to
their low incidence. Incidence rates are presented here for the most
recent years for which data were available in the WHO World Report on
Violence and Health (2002).

References
Nilsson, L. (2000). Barnmisshandel: En Kartl=E4ggning av Polisanm=E4ld
Misshandel av Sm=E5 Barn. Brottsf=F6rebyggande r=E5det; Stockholm.

Janson, S. (2001). Barn och Misshandel. A Report to the Swedish
Governmental Committee on Child Abuse and Related Issues. Statens
Offentliga Utredningar; Stockholm.

SCB (1996). Spanking and Other Forms of Physical Punishment: Study of
Adults=3D and Middle School Students=3D Opinions, Experience, and
Knowledge.@ Demografiska Rapporter, 1.2.

Stattin, H., Janson, H., Klackenberg-Larsson, I., & Magnusson, D.
(1995). ACorporal punishment in everyday life: An intergenerational
perspective. (J. McCord, ed.) Pp 315-347. Cambridge University Press;
Cambridge.

World Health Organization (2002). World Report on Violence and Health.
Author; Geneva.
..=2E............................................. .................

Kane: reasoned argument on this issue is scarce to invisible here.
Overlooked are the many factors that contribute to abuse of children.
Spanking is only ONE of those. Child deaths from abuse in Sweden, for
instance, has dropped from 4 (that's not a rate folks but a whole
number) to 2 in recent years.

More thoughtful approaches to the concept of non-punitive parenting
show in this article below. It also helps us see the history of what
culminated in the spanking ban by law:

http://www.bo.se/adfinity.aspx?pageid=3D90#

Utskrivet fr=E5n www.bo.se
The Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban

For more than twenty years, the corporal punishment ban has been
effective in Sweden. The Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban was passed in
1979 - ten years before the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -
and was the result of more than 50 years of legislative and
opinion-forming efforts related to child abuse.

Corporal punishment was first banned in the Swedish grammar schools in
1927. Similar legislation was passed for elementary schools in 1958 and
banned totally in 1962 in the Education Act. By 1966, parents and those
responsible for children were forbidden from hitting their children.

A corporal ban
Ten years later, a decision in a court case concerning a father
assaulting his three-year-old daughter was widely discussed. The case
initiated a number of private member=B4s bills in the Swedish parliament
concerning the need for an explicit prohibition of chastisement, but it
wasn't until 1979 that the Swedish Parliament adopted a bill, with 256
MPs voting for and 6 MPs voting against.

The arguments against were that the proposal was unnecessary and even
dangerous. By removing the rights for parents to chastise the child,
many well-meaning parents would be stamped as criminals and many
children would never learn to behave. But one of the MPs said; "In a
free democracy like our own, we use words as arguments, not blows. We
talk to people and do not beat them. If we can=B4t convince our children
with words, we shall never convince them with violence". This has
become a rather famous statement in Sweden and one, of which it is not
very easy to oppose.

The ban is now an act within Chapter 6 in the Parenthood and
Guardianship Code, which expressively forbids physical punishment and
degrading treatment. "Children are entitled to care, security and a
good upbringing. Children are to be treated with respect for their
person and individuality and may not be subjected to corporal
punishment or any other humiliating treatment."

The Criminal Code
The Code of Parenthood and Guardianship in which one finds the law
against chastising children is a civil law as opposed to the Criminal
code. This means that the prohibition to use corporal punishment is not
in itself sanctioned. It=B4s the Criminal Code that decides whether or
not an offence has been committed, but also that it is judged under the
same rules which apply when adults commits acts of physical violence to
adults or other people=B4s children. The Criminal Code states that
anyone who causes another person physical injury, illness or pain or
other harmful condition is to be convicted to a fine or prison up to
two years. (Up to ten years if the crime is to be considered as severe,
for example if the victim is a child). When comparing figures from
other countries, including the Nordic countries, we find that corporal
punishment towards children is lower in Sweden. This seems above all to
concern less serious and average forms of corporal punishment whilst
more serious forms, such as blows with a blunt object may still be as
common as in other Nordic countries.

Shifts in attitude
We know that there has been a shift in attitude and opinion in Sweden
on corporal punishment and that it started even before the law was
effective. The Swedish Institute for Statistics has regularly
investigated attitudes in the population towards corporal punishment.
In 1965, 53% were positive towards corporal punishment of children,
1968-42%, 1971-35%, 1981-26% and 1994-11%. Hence, today in Sweden
probably less than 10% are positive to the use of corporal punishment.
The younger population is much less in favour of using physical
punishment than elder generations. This shows that the ban is widely
supported and well known in Sweden even amongst young children. In
1979, a special brochure was sent out to every household in the
country, explaining the anti spanking ban and how to bring up children
with other methods than physical punishment. The brochure was
translated into several different languages.

Statistics prove that corporal punishment as a way of upbringing has
substantially decreased. When comparing figures in interviews with
parents between the years 1980 and 2000, the results show, that
corporal punishment has decreased significantly, especially in regard
to striking a child with ones fist, with a blunt object or giving the
child a so called "good hiding". The figures are in accordance with
results from two other studies on intermediate-level pupils and twenty
year-olds submitted by the Parliamentary Committee against Abuse
towards Children. This means, that forceful corporal punishment, which
may potentially harm the child, also has decreased significantly. On
the other hand, concerning serious and unusual forms of corporal
punishment, such as threats or the use of knives or firearms, the level
shows no decrease. One reason could be, that malignant forms of
corporal punishment, most often is part of a strong deviant behaviour
in the adult as a result of mental illness or a case of abnormality or
flaw in the character- personality features which are probably very
little affected by general changes of attitude in society.

Uncertainty
As more and more people tend to report child abuse, it has become
somewhat confusing as to whether child abuse in Sweden in reality has
increased during the last decades. We know that much of the violence,
which was "invisible" in the past, now has come out into the open, but
thanks to education, information about the anti-spanking law and the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, awareness has increased in
society concerning children's needs and violence towards children.
Today, institutions like schools and day-care centres including
professional groups, which come into contact with children, have a
mandatory obligation to report if they consider that a child is at risk
and in need of support from the social welfare system. The conclusion
therefore, is that the increase of reports of child abuse is an effect
of increased awareness, rather than an increase of actual violence
towards children.

Complex area
This is a complex area that has to be put in its right context. The
issue of child abuse and neglect is not only relevant to changes in
legislation, but also to the changes in society that have occurred,
during more than twenty years of existing legislation. There are groups
of children who are deprived and in vulnerable situations and families
where child abuse and neglect is more or less a constant element. These
kinds of families will probably occur in any society regardless of
corporal punishment bans.
"
Kane

A rigorous evaluation of the effects of spanking bans in Sweden and other
countries is sorely needed now that other countries are considering such
bans (e.g., Germany). Published evaluations before 1999 included only 7
journal articles in English, leading to my call for "more timely and
rigorous evaluations of similar social experiments in the future"
(Larzelere, 1999, p. 381). Durrant (1999a) also published an evaluation of
the success of Sweden's ban in 1999. Given the importance of this issue, I
want to briefly compare our respective conclusions and the evidence for
them.

SUBSEQUENT PHYSICAL CHILD ABUSE. Durrant (1999) implied that Sweden has
had minimal child abuse since 1979, whereas I could find no evidence that
their child abuse rate had decreased since then. We both agree that the
child abuse fatality rates have been very low in Sweden, with no
significant change after the 1979 spanking ban. This is very commendable,
but provides no information about the effect of the spanking ban, because
the low rates preceded 1979. My review considered three major studies of
non-fatal child abuse that Durrant did not consider: Gelles & Edfeldt
(1986) and Wittrock (1992, 1995). Durrant cited the second Wittrock report
as "SCB (1995a)" elsewhere in her article.

The Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) study was the most rigorous of the 7 journal
articles located for my literature review. Their comparison of national
surveys in Sweden and the USA used the Conflict Tactics Scale, the most
widely used survey measure of physical child abuse. Gelles and Edfeldt
concluded:

"Swedish parents report more pushing, grabbing or shoving than American
parents and double the rate of beating children . . . American parents
report more spanking. . . In general, there were far more similarities in
the two countries than there were differences" (p. 506-507).

Accordingly, the child abuse measure that included corporal punishment
(hitting with an object) was significantly higher in the USA, whereas the
child abuse measure that was identical except for excluding that item
showed a 4.1% rate in the USA and a 3.6% rate in Sweden. A later (1985)
American survey that was more equivalent to the Swedish survey concluded
that 1.9% of American parents were abusing their child according to this
measure.

As Durrant pointed out, the 1975 American response rate was lower than the
Gelles-Edfeldt Swedish survey done in 1980. This was probably because that
American survey used face-to-face interviews, whereas the Swedish survey
used telephone calls. Fortunately, the 1985 American survey used telephone
calls and had an even higher response rate than the Swedish survey.
Considering a variety of factors, the fairest and most conservative
comparison was to compare the Swedish child abuse rate with the average of
the two USA rates. By this method, the Swedish child abuse rate was 49%
higher in 1980 than the average of the 1975 and 1985 USA rates (Larzelere,
1999). These findings were surprising to me, just as the original findings
were to Gelles and Edfeldt. At first, I thought it might reflect a
temporary upsurge in child abuse as part of a systemic change in Sweden to
disciplining children without the use of spanking.

But the best evidence on Swedish trends since then indicates sharply
increasing rates of physical child abuse, at least in criminal records of
assaults by relatives against children under the age of 7. This frequency
increased from 99 in 1981 to 583 in 1994, a 489% increase. As Wittrock
(1995) and I (1999) suggested, this could reflect a change in reporting
mechanisms, an actual increase, or other factors. Other countries need an
unbiased, objective way of deciding among these alternative explanations
before emulating Swedish policies.

SUBSEQUENT SUPPORT FOR CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. Durrant and I used the
identical data source to arrive at nearly opposite conclusions about the
effect of the spanking ban on subsequent support for corporal punishment
(Statistics Sweden, 1996; Durrant's "SCB, 1996c"). Interested readers can
view a summary of this data source on the web (Sanden & Lundgren, 1997).
Durrant concluded that "public support for corporal punishment has
declined" (Durrant, 1999a, p. 435), whereas I concluded, "the spanking ban
has made little change in problematic forms of physical punishment"
(Larzelere, 1999, p. 382). Durrant arrived at her conclusion by comparing
apples and oranges - or, more accurately, apples and half-oranges. She not
only compared survey questions that were very different in 1981 and 1994,
but she used only one of the two responses to the 1994 question that
indicated qualified support for corporal punishment.

The Swedish survey item in 1978, 1979, and 1981 was "a child has to be
given corporal punishment from time to time," with which 26% of Swedes
agreed all three years. The 11% cited by Durrant in 1994-5 were
"positively inclined to milder forms of physical punishment" (Statistics
Sweden, 1996, p. 8), whereas another 22% chose the following alternative
response to the same question: "in principle against all forms of physical
punishment, but can use such punishment if upset enough." Only 56% chose
the third response, expressing opposition to all physical punishment. The
same Swedish survey included the following item, which was closer in
wording to the 1978-1981 item: "Mild or moderate physical punishment is
sometimes necessary as a child rearing method, but should be carefully
considered and not the result of anger" (Sanden, 1996, p. 10). Thirty-four
percent agreed partly or fully with this item, an increase from the 26%
support in 1978, just before the 1979 spanking ban.

In the Discussion section of my literature review, I used the same Swedish
survey to show that actual corporal punishment received had dropped very
little (e.g., 32% of valid answers from those born after the spanking ban
compared to 34% in the next oldest generation). Further, the most
problematic types had not decreased at all (e.g., spanking of teenagers).
Putting the pattern of these changes together with the available child
abuse trends suggested the hypothesis quoted by Rolf Nilsson on this
listserve: "So it might be hypothesized that that the prohibition of all
spanking eliminates a type of mild spanking that prevents further
escalation of aggression within disciplinary incidents" (Larzelere, 1999,
p. 390). Corporal punishment of teenagers or when "upset enough" could
increase the risk of child abuse more than a mild spanking.

SUBSEQUENT ASSAULTS BY MINORS AGAINST MINORS. Durrant (1999a) concluded
that those raised after the 1979 spanking ban were less likely to be
perpetrators of assaults against children, relative to overall societal
trends. Her primary data source supports the opposite conclusion
(Wittrock, 1995; her "SCB, 1995a"). The percentage increases from 1984 to
1994 in criminal assaults against 7- to 14-year-olds were as follows: A
519% increase by minors under 15; a 231% increase by 15- to 19-year-olds;
133% by 20- to 24-year-olds; 53% by 25- to 29-year-olds; 122% by 30- to
39-year-olds; 147% by 40- to 49-year-olds; and 128% by perpetrators over
49 (Wittrock, 1995). The largest increases were for perpetrators who went
through the preschool years after the spanking ban. Those who were 25 to
29 years old in 1994-5 were 10 to 14 years old when the spanking ban was
passed. Yet this is the group Durrant includes in her youngest group to
support her incorrect conclusion that younger persons were proportionately
less involved in assaults against children.

SUBSEQUENT SUPPORTIVENESS OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS. I cannot critique Durrant's
conclusion on this as confidently because I do not have access to her
data. Note, however, that for 46% of the families in 1995, "support and
care measures" consisted of removing the child from the home (Durrant,
1999b, p. 70). Thankfully, this percentage was down from 60% of new cases
in 1982. The number of new compulsory removals from the home was 7% higher
in Sweden in 1995 than in 1982 (Durrant, 1999b, p. 70). A Swedish book
(Ivarsson, 1984) and a Swedish lawyer (Westerberg, 1999) have claimed that
the risk of children being removed from their home is much higher in
Sweden than in other European countries, such as Germany and Great
Britain.

CONCLUSIONS. Thus my major conclusion seems very appropriate: we need
"more timely and rigorous evaluations of similar social experiments in the
future" (Larzelere, 1999, p. 381). The Swedish spanking ban was
well-intentioned - just as a similar approach to another abuse problem led
to the USA's Prohibition Amendment. That Prohibition did not live up to
its high ideals - and the spanking prohibition may be faring no better.
Both prohibitions may lead to more dangerous ways of either drinking or
spanking, thus undermining their intended beneficial effects.

We need to move beyond sole reliance on such simplistic, absolutist
resolutions to these important problems. Some innovative possibilities:
(1) Insist on methodologically sound evaluations of policy changes,
especially when the changes are this major. Because we have not done this,
we cannot be sure how to explain the 589% increase in child abuse cases,
the 519% increase in assaults by minors, or why the changes in corporal
punishment are so small in Sweden. (2) Emphasize empowering parents with
milder, effective disciplinary tactics rather than legislating prematurely
against nonabusive disciplinary tactics. (3) Explore empirically supported
middle-ground positions before polarizing controversial issues to extreme
positions. A balanced middle position would be more sensitive to ethnic,
religious, and socio-economic differences (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997;
Gunnoe & Mariner, 1997). (4) Distinguish between effective vs.
counter-productive ways of using each disciplinary tactic! How parents use
disciplinary tactics may be more important than what tactics they use.

I hope this stimulates more careful thinking about this complex set of
important issues.



References
Deater-Deckard, K., & Dodge, K. A. (1997). Externalizing behavior problems
and discipline revisited: Nonlinear effects and variation by culture,
context, and gender. Psychological Inquiry, 8, 161-175. (11 responses to
this important article appear in the same journal)

Durrant, J. E. (1999a). Evaluating the success of Sweden's corporal
punishment ban. Child Abuse & Neglect, 5, 435-448.

Durrant, J. E. (1999b). The status of Swedish children and youth since the
passage of he 1979 corporal punishment ban. London: Save the Children.

Gelles, R. J., & Edfeldt, A. W. (1986). Violence towards children in the
United States and Sweden. Child Abuse & Neglect, 10, 501-510.

Gunnoe, M. L., & Mariner, C. L. (1997). Toward a developmental-contextual
model of the effects of parental spanking on children's aggression.
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 151, 768-775.

Ivarsson, M. (1984). Sverige 1984 [Sweden 1984]. Malmo, Sweden: Lehmanns
Forlag.

Larzelere, R. E., & Johnson, B. (1999). Evaluation of the effects of
Sweden's spanking ban on physical child abuse rates: A literature review.
Psychological Reports, 85, 381-392.

Sanden, A., & Lundgren, L. (1997). Spanking of children much less common.
Statistika centralbryan. http://www.scb.se/scbeng/vhtm/barnaga.htm

Statistics Sweden. (1996). Spanking and other forms of physical punishment
(Demography, the Family, and Children 1996:1.2). Stockholm, Sweden.

Westerberg, S. (1999, June 19). Lecture to the Family Education Trust,
London. .

Wittrock, U. (1992). Barmisshandel i kriminalstatstiken 1981-1991 [Violent
crimes against children in criminal statistics, 1981-1991]. KR Info, 1992,
7.

Wittrock, U. (1995). Barnmisshandel, 1984-1994 [Violent crimes against
children, 1984-1994]. KR Info, 1-6.


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Doan


On 22 Feb 2005, Kane wrote:

The effect of spanking bans in Sweden:

http://4forums.com/political/showpos...ostcount=3D137
"

Thread: Is spanking a form of child abuse?
View Single Post
#137
Old 05-20-2004, 02:44 AM
mizmaxx's Avatar
mizmaxx mizmaxx is offline
Registered User

Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 830
Quote:
Originally Posted by King Triton
And it is funny how you are given proof that it failed miserably in
Sweden,but you choose to ignore the facts and spout off that only 1
study doesn`t prove anything.How about the increase in
crime,assaults,etc.

Well, since you asked- (emphasis mine)
Child Abuse in Sweden
By Joan E. Durrant, Ph.D. 1
April 9, 2003

For a number of years, various media have carried reports stating that
child abuse has increased in Sweden since the passage of the 1979
corporal punishment ban. This statement, which was recently given new
life in the Canadian Charter Challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal
Code, is completely erroneous. All available evidence indicates that
Sweden has been extremely successful in reducing rates of child
physical abuse over the past few decades and that reduction has been
maintained since the passage of the corporal punishment ban. The
purpose of this brief report is to disseminate accurate information on
this issue.

1. Reporting Rates vs. Rates of Actual Abuse
The claim that child abuse has increased in Sweden is primarily based
on misinterpretation of assault report statistics. It is the case that
reporting of child physical assault has increased in Sweden since the
1970s - as it has in every nation that has raised awareness of the
issue of child abuse. Reporting rates are by no means equivalent to
rates of actual abuse. They are sharp reflections of/strongly tied to
shifts in public awareness.

For example, in the early 1960s, it was estimated that about 300
children were being maltreated in the U.S. By 1990, the U.S. Advisory
Board on Child Abuse and Neglect had officially recorded 2.4 million
reported cases. By 1993, they had recorded almost 3 million cases. It
is highly unlikely that actual child maltreatment increased by a factor
of 10,000 in that period. It is also highly unlikely that only 300
children were maltreated in the U.S. in the early 1960s.

It is a well-known fact that when mandatory reporting laws, public
education campaigns, and other measures are implemented to increase
awareness, reporting will increase. This is the goal of such measures.
The Swedish reporting figures have been cited as if they are actual
rates of abuse, which they are not.

Recently the Swedish National Crime Prevention Council examined 434
cases of assaults on young children within the family that were
reported to the police in 1990 (all cases) and 1997 (every other case).
It was found that the proportion of cases involving serious injuries
sustained by children in this age range had decreased substantially.
The majority of reported assaults result in minor injuries or no
injuries at all. On the basis of an extensive analysis of the data, the
National Crime Prevention Council concluded that there has been an
increase in the propensity to report cases of assault on young
children, and that it is this increase that is responsible for most, if
not all, of the rise in the number of such offences reported to the
police@ (Nilsson, 2000, p. 68).

2. Prevalence of Child Physical Assault Across Time
Studies conducted at various points in time demonstrate that the
prevalence, frequency and harshness of assaults against children have
declined dramatically in Sweden over the last two generations.
Substantial proportions of women who became mothers in the 1950s struck
their children at least weekly (e.g., 55% of mothers of 4-year-old
daughters; 20% of mothers of 8-year-old sons) (Stattin et al., 1995).
Among 3- to 5-year-old children of that generation, implements were
used by 13% of mothers (Stattin et al.,1995).

In contrast, 86% of youth who were born in the 1980s report never
having been physically punished (Janson, 2001). Of those who were, the
vast majority experienced it no more than once or twice in their
childhoods (SCB, 1996). Virtually no children are hit with implements
in Sweden today.

It is important to note that legislative reform began many decades ago
in Sweden. The corporal punishment ban was the end, not the beginning,
of legal changes in that country. Most notably, the provision excusing
parents who caused minor injuries to their children through physical
punishment was repealed from the Swedish Penal Code in 1957. The
explicit ban on physical punishment was implemented 22 years later.

3. Child Abuse Fatalities
The incidence of homicides of children under the age of 5 can provide
an estimate of child abuse mortality, as it is these children who are
most vulnerable to fatal injury and the contribution of other forms of
external violence is minimized among this age group. Between 1975 and
2000, the average annual number of homicides of children aged 0 to 4 in
Sweden was 4. The average incidence between 1995 and 2000 (2.8) was
lower than that between 1975 and 1980 (4.0) - despite population
growth.

The World Health Organization (2002) provides homicide incidence
figures for children aged 0 to 4 in Sweden (1996), Canada (1997) and
the United States (1998).2 These figures a

Sweden: 3
Canada: 24
United States: 723

(Canada's population is approximately 3 times larger than Sweden's. The
U.S. population is approximately 20 times larger than Sweden's.)

Child homicides attributable specifically to physical abuse (excluding
homicide-suicides, neonaticide and postnatal depression) are virtually
non-existent in Sweden. Between 1976 and 2000 (the most recent year for
which statistics are currently available), a total of 4 children died
in Sweden as a result of physical abuse.

Summary
There is no evidence to support the claim that child abuse has
increased in Sweden since corporal punishment was banned there in 1979.
In fact, Sweden has maintained a very low rate of child abuse
internationally for more than 25 years.

Three Important Points

1. It is important to note that Sweden's law was intended to affirm
children's rights; it was not expected to end all abuse of children for
all time. North American assault laws have not eliminated assaults
against adults, yet we recognize their importance in setting a standard
of non-violence for the society, sending a clear message, and affording
protection to those who have been harmed. This was the fundamental
intent of Sweden's corporal punishment ban.

2. Legislative reform in Sweden began in 1928, when corporal punishment
was forbidden in secondary schools. It was 1957 when the legal defence
of reasonable correction was repealed from Sweden's Penal Code. The ban
must be viewed within its historical context to be understood.

3. Since Sweden passed its ban on corporal punishment in 1979, 10 other
nations have followed: Finland, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Cyprus,
Croatia, Latvia, Israel, Germany, and Iceland. The purpose of these
bans is to explicitly recognize children's rights to protection under
the law - the same rights that adults take for granted. In addition,
Italy's highest court has ruled that "the use of violence for
educational purposes can no longer be considered lawful."

1 Joan E. Durrant, Ph.D., is a Child-Clinical Psychologist and
Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Family Studies at the
University of Manitoba. She is an internationally recognized expert on
the Swedish ban. Over the past decade, she has conducted extensive
research on this law and has lived in Sweden for extended periods to
gain a full understanding of its history, implementation and effects.

2 Rates per population are not available for Sweden and Canada due to
their low incidence. Incidence rates are presented here for the most
recent years for which data were available in the WHO World Report on
Violence and Health (2002).

References
Nilsson, L. (2000). Barnmisshandel: En Kartl=E4ggning av Polisanm=E4ld
Misshandel av Sm=E5 Barn. Brottsf=F6rebyggande r=E5det; Stockholm.

Janson, S. (2001). Barn och Misshandel. A Report to the Swedish
Governmental Committee on Child Abuse and Related Issues. Statens
Offentliga Utredningar; Stockholm.

SCB (1996). Spanking and Other Forms of Physical Punishment: Study of
Adults=3D and Middle School Students=3D Opinions, Experience, and
Knowledge.@ Demografiska Rapporter, 1.2.

Stattin, H., Janson, H., Klackenberg-Larsson, I., & Magnusson, D.
(1995). ACorporal punishment in everyday life: An intergenerational
perspective. (J. McCord, ed.) Pp 315-347. Cambridge University Press;
Cambridge.

World Health Organization (2002). World Report on Violence and Health.
Author; Geneva.
.................................................. ..............

Kane: reasoned argument on this issue is scarce to invisible here.
Overlooked are the many factors that contribute to abuse of children.
Spanking is only ONE of those. Child deaths from abuse in Sweden, for
instance, has dropped from 4 (that's not a rate folks but a whole
number) to 2 in recent years.

More thoughtful approaches to the concept of non-punitive parenting
show in this article below. It also helps us see the history of what
culminated in the spanking ban by law:

http://www.bo.se/adfinity.aspx?pageid=3D90#

Utskrivet fr=E5n www.bo.se
The Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban

For more than twenty years, the corporal punishment ban has been
effective in Sweden. The Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban was passed in
1979 - ten years before the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -
and was the result of more than 50 years of legislative and
opinion-forming efforts related to child abuse.

Corporal punishment was first banned in the Swedish grammar schools in
1927. Similar legislation was passed for elementary schools in 1958 and
banned totally in 1962 in the Education Act. By 1966, parents and those
responsible for children were forbidden from hitting their children.

A corporal ban
Ten years later, a decision in a court case concerning a father
assaulting his three-year-old daughter was widely discussed. The case
initiated a number of private member=B4s bills in the Swedish parliament
concerning the need for an explicit prohibition of chastisement, but it
wasn't until 1979 that the Swedish Parliament adopted a bill, with 256
MPs voting for and 6 MPs voting against.

The arguments against were that the proposal was unnecessary and even
dangerous. By removing the rights for parents to chastise the child,
many well-meaning parents would be stamped as criminals and many
children would never learn to behave. But one of the MPs said; "In a
free democracy like our own, we use words as arguments, not blows. We
talk to people and do not beat them. If we can=B4t convince our children
with words, we shall never convince them with violence". This has
become a rather famous statement in Sweden and one, of which it is not
very easy to oppose.

The ban is now an act within Chapter 6 in the Parenthood and
Guardianship Code, which expressively forbids physical punishment and
degrading treatment. "Children are entitled to care, security and a
good upbringing. Children are to be treated with respect for their
person and individuality and may not be subjected to corporal
punishment or any other humiliating treatment."

The Criminal Code
The Code of Parenthood and Guardianship in which one finds the law
against chastising children is a civil law as opposed to the Criminal
code. This means that the prohibition to use corporal punishment is not
in itself sanctioned. It=B4s the Criminal Code that decides whether or
not an offence has been committed, but also that it is judged under the
same rules which apply when adults commits acts of physical violence to
adults or other people=B4s children. The Criminal Code states that
anyone who causes another person physical injury, illness or pain or
other harmful condition is to be convicted to a fine or prison up to
two years. (Up to ten years if the crime is to be considered as severe,
for example if the victim is a child). When comparing figures from
other countries, including the Nordic countries, we find that corporal
punishment towards children is lower in Sweden. This seems above all to
concern less serious and average forms of corporal punishment whilst
more serious forms, such as blows with a blunt object may still be as
common as in other Nordic countries.

Shifts in attitude
We know that there has been a shift in attitude and opinion in Sweden
on corporal punishment and that it started even before the law was
effective. The Swedish Institute for Statistics has regularly
investigated attitudes in the population towards corporal punishment.
In 1965, 53% were positive towards corporal punishment of children,
1968-42%, 1971-35%, 1981-26% and 1994-11%. Hence, today in Sweden
probably less than 10% are positive to the use of corporal punishment.
The younger population is much less in favour of using physical
punishment than elder generations. This shows that the ban is widely
supported and well known in Sweden even amongst young children. In
1979, a special brochure was sent out to every household in the
country, explaining the anti spanking ban and how to bring up children
with other methods than physical punishment. The brochure was
translated into several different languages.

Statistics prove that corporal punishment as a way of upbringing has
substantially decreased. When comparing figures in interviews with
parents between the years 1980 and 2000, the results show, that
corporal punishment has decreased significantly, especially in regard
to striking a child with ones fist, with a blunt object or giving the
child a so called "good hiding". The figures are in accordance with
results from two other studies on intermediate-level pupils and twenty
year-olds submitted by the Parliamentary Committee against Abuse
towards Children. This means, that forceful corporal punishment, which
may potentially harm the child, also has decreased significantly. On
the other hand, concerning serious and unusual forms of corporal
punishment, such as threats or the use of knives or firearms, the level
shows no decrease. One reason could be, that malignant forms of
corporal punishment, most often is part of a strong deviant behaviour
in the adult as a result of mental illness or a case of abnormality or
flaw in the character- personality features which are probably very
little affected by general changes of attitude in society.

Uncertainty
As more and more people tend to report child abuse, it has become
somewhat confusing as to whether child abuse in Sweden in reality has
increased during the last decades. We know that much of the violence,
which was "invisible" in the past, now has come out into the open, but
thanks to education, information about the anti-spanking law and the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, awareness has increased in
society concerning children's needs and violence towards children.
Today, institutions like schools and day-care centres including
professional groups, which come into contact with children, have a
mandatory obligation to report if they consider that a child is at risk
and in need of support from the social welfare system. The conclusion
therefore, is that the increase of reports of child abuse is an effect
of increased awareness, rather than an increase of actual violence
towards children.

Complex area
This is a complex area that has to be put in its right context. The
issue of child abuse and neglect is not only relevant to changes in
legislation, but also to the changes in society that have occurred,
during more than twenty years of existing legislation. There are groups
of children who are deprived and in vulnerable situations and families
where child abuse and neglect is more or less a constant element. These
kinds of families will probably occur in any society regardless of
corporal punishment bans.
"
Kane

"This is a complex area that has to be put in its right context. The issue
of child abuse and neglect is not only relevant to changes in legislation,
but also to the changes in society that have occurred, during more than
twenty years of existing legislation. There are groups of children who are
deprived and in vulnerable situations and families where child abuse and
neglect is more or less a constant element. These kinds of families will
probably occur in any society regardless of corporal punishment bans."

http://www.bo.se/adfinity.aspx?pageid=3D90

Doan


On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Doan wrote:


A rigorous evaluation of the effects of spanking bans in Sweden and other
countries is sorely needed now that other countries are considering such
bans (e.g., Germany). Published evaluations before 1999 included only 7
journal articles in English, leading to my call for "more timely and
rigorous evaluations of similar social experiments in the future"
(Larzelere, 1999, p. 381). Durrant (1999a) also published an evaluation o=
f
the success of Sweden's ban in 1999. Given the importance of this issue, =
I
want to briefly compare our respective conclusions and the evidence for
them.

SUBSEQUENT PHYSICAL CHILD ABUSE. Durrant (1999) implied that Sweden has
had minimal child abuse since 1979, whereas I could find no evidence that
their child abuse rate had decreased since then. We both agree that the
child abuse fatality rates have been very low in Sweden, with no
significant change after the 1979 spanking ban. This is very commendable,
but provides no information about the effect of the spanking ban, because
the low rates preceded 1979. My review considered three major studies of
non-fatal child abuse that Durrant did not consider: Gelles & Edfeldt
(1986) and Wittrock (1992, 1995). Durrant cited the second Wittrock repor=
t
as "SCB (1995a)" elsewhere in her article.

The Gelles and Edfeldt (1986) study was the most rigorous of the 7 journa=
l
articles located for my literature review. Their comparison of national
surveys in Sweden and the USA used the Conflict Tactics Scale, the most
widely used survey measure of physical child abuse. Gelles and Edfeldt
concluded:

"Swedish parents report more pushing, grabbing or shoving than American
parents and double the rate of beating children . . . American parents
report more spanking. . . In general, there were far more similarities in
the two countries than there were differences" (p. 506-507).

Accordingly, the child abuse measure that included corporal punishment
(hitting with an object) was significantly higher in the USA, whereas the
child abuse measure that was identical except for excluding that item
showed a 4.1% rate in the USA and a 3.6% rate in Sweden. A later (1985)
American survey that was more equivalent to the Swedish survey concluded
that 1.9% of American parents were abusing their child according to this
measure.

As Durrant pointed out, the 1975 American response rate was lower than th=
e
Gelles-Edfeldt Swedish survey done in 1980. This was probably because tha=
t
American survey used face-to-face interviews, whereas the Swedish survey
used telephone calls. Fortunately, the 1985 American survey used telephon=
e
calls and had an even higher response rate than the Swedish survey.
Considering a variety of factors, the fairest and most conservative
comparison was to compare the Swedish child abuse rate with the average o=
f
the two USA rates. By this method, the Swedish child abuse rate was 49%
higher in 1980 than the average of the 1975 and 1985 USA rates (Larzelere=
,
1999). These findings were surprising to me, just as the original finding=
s
were to Gelles and Edfeldt. At first, I thought it might reflect a
temporary upsurge in child abuse as part of a systemic change in Sweden t=
o
disciplining children without the use of spanking.

But the best evidence on Swedish trends since then indicates sharply
increasing rates of physical child abuse, at least in criminal records of
assaults by relatives against children under the age of 7. This frequency
increased from 99 in 1981 to 583 in 1994, a 489% increase. As Wittrock
(1995) and I (1999) suggested, this could reflect a change in reporting
mechanisms, an actual increase, or other factors. Other countries need an
unbiased, objective way of deciding among these alternative explanations
before emulating Swedish policies.

SUBSEQUENT SUPPORT FOR CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. Durrant and I used the
identical data source to arrive at nearly opposite conclusions about the
effect of the spanking ban on subsequent support for corporal punishment
(Statistics Sweden, 1996; Durrant's "SCB, 1996c"). Interested readers can
view a summary of this data source on the web (Sanden & Lundgren, 1997).
Durrant concluded that "public support for corporal punishment has
declined" (Durrant, 1999a, p. 435), whereas I concluded, "the spanking ba=
n
has made little change in problematic forms of physical punishment"
(Larzelere, 1999, p. 382). Durrant arrived at her conclusion by comparing
apples and oranges - or, more accurately, apples and half-oranges. She no=
t
only compared survey questions that were very different in 1981 and 1994,
but she used only one of the two responses to the 1994 question that
indicated qualified support for corporal punishment.

The Swedish survey item in 1978, 1979, and 1981 was "a child has to be
given corporal punishment from time to time," with which 26% of Swedes
agreed all three years. The 11% cited by Durrant in 1994-5 were
"positively inclined to milder forms of physical punishment" (Statistics
Sweden, 1996, p. 8), whereas another 22% chose the following alternative
response to the same question: "in principle against all forms of physica=
l
punishment, but can use such punishment if upset enough." Only 56% chose
the third response, expressing opposition to all physical punishment. The
same Swedish survey included the following item, which was closer in
wording to the 1978-1981 item: "Mild or moderate physical punishment is
sometimes necessary as a child rearing method, but should be carefully
considered and not the result of anger" (Sanden, 1996, p. 10). Thirty-fou=
r
percent agreed partly or fully with this item, an increase from the 26%
support in 1978, just before the 1979 spanking ban.

In the Discussion section of my literature review, I used the same Swedis=
h
survey to show that actual corporal punishment received had dropped very
little (e.g., 32% of valid answers from those born after the spanking ban
compared to 34% in the next oldest generation). Further, the most
problematic types had not decreased at all (e.g., spanking of teenagers).
Putting the pattern of these changes together with the available child
abuse trends suggested the hypothesis quoted by Rolf Nilsson on this
listserve: "So it might be hypothesized that that the prohibition of all
spanking eliminates a type of mild spanking that prevents further
escalation of aggression within disciplinary incidents" (Larzelere, 1999,
p. 390). Corporal punishment of teenagers or when "upset enough" could
increase the risk of child abuse more than a mild spanking.

SUBSEQUENT ASSAULTS BY MINORS AGAINST MINORS. Durrant (1999a) concluded
that those raised after the 1979 spanking ban were less likely to be
perpetrators of assaults against children, relative to overall societal
trends. Her primary data source supports the opposite conclusion
(Wittrock, 1995; her "SCB, 1995a"). The percentage increases from 1984 to
1994 in criminal assaults against 7- to 14-year-olds were as follows: A
519% increase by minors under 15; a 231% increase by 15- to 19-year-olds;
133% by 20- to 24-year-olds; 53% by 25- to 29-year-olds; 122% by 30- to
39-year-olds; 147% by 40- to 49-year-olds; and 128% by perpetrators over
49 (Wittrock, 1995). The largest increases were for perpetrators who went
through the preschool years after the spanking ban. Those who were 25 to
29 years old in 1994-5 were 10 to 14 years old when the spanking ban was
passed. Yet this is the group Durrant includes in her youngest group to
support her incorrect conclusion that younger persons were proportionatel=
y
less involved in assaults against children.

SUBSEQUENT SUPPORTIVENESS OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS. I cannot critique Durrant's
conclusion on this as confidently because I do not have access to her
data. Note, however, that for 46% of the families in 1995, "support and
care measures" consisted of removing the child from the home (Durrant,
1999b, p. 70). Thankfully, this percentage was down from 60% of new cases
in 1982. The number of new compulsory removals from the home was 7% highe=
r
in Sweden in 1995 than in 1982 (Durrant, 1999b, p. 70). A Swedish book
(Ivarsson, 1984) and a Swedish lawyer (Westerberg, 1999) have claimed tha=
t
the risk of children being removed from their home is much higher in
Sweden than in other European countries, such as Germany and Great
Britain.

CONCLUSIONS. Thus my major conclusion seems very appropriate: we need
"more timely and rigorous evaluations of similar social experiments in th=
e
future" (Larzelere, 1999, p. 381). The Swedish spanking ban was
well-intentioned - just as a similar approach to another abuse problem le=
d
to the USA's Prohibition Amendment. That Prohibition did not live up to
its high ideals - and the spanking prohibition may be faring no better.
Both prohibitions may lead to more dangerous ways of either drinking or
spanking, thus undermining their intended beneficial effects.

We need to move beyond sole reliance on such simplistic, absolutist
resolutions to these important problems. Some innovative possibilities:
(1) Insist on methodologically sound evaluations of policy changes,
especially when the changes are this major. Because we have not done this=
,
we cannot be sure how to explain the 589% increase in child abuse cases,
the 519% increase in assaults by minors, or why the changes in corporal
punishment are so small in Sweden. (2) Emphasize empowering parents with
milder, effective disciplinary tactics rather than legislating prematurel=
y
against nonabusive disciplinary tactics. (3) Explore empirically supporte=
d
middle-ground positions before polarizing controversial issues to extreme
positions. A balanced middle position would be more sensitive to ethnic,
religious, and socio-economic differences (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997;
Gunnoe & Mariner, 1997). (4) Distinguish between effective vs.
counter-productive ways of using each disciplinary tactic! How parents us=
e
disciplinary tactics may be more important than what tactics they use.

I hope this stimulates more careful thinking about this complex set of
important issues.



References
Deater-Deckard, K., & Dodge, K. A. (1997). Externalizing behavior problem=
s
and discipline revisited: Nonlinear effects and variation by culture,
context, and gender. Psychological Inquiry, 8, 161-175. (11 responses to
this important article appear in the same journal)

Durrant, J. E. (1999a). Evaluating the success of Sweden's corporal
punishment ban. Child Abuse & Neglect, 5, 435-448.

Durrant, J. E. (1999b). The status of Swedish children and youth since th=
e
passage of he 1979 corporal punishment ban. London: Save the Children.

Gelles, R. J., & Edfeldt, A. W. (1986). Violence towards children in the
United States and Sweden. Child Abuse & Neglect, 10, 501-510.

Gunnoe, M. L., & Mariner, C. L. (1997). Toward a developmental-contextual
model of the effects of parental spanking on children's aggression.
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 151, 768-775.

Ivarsson, M. (1984). Sverige 1984 [Sweden 1984]. Malmo, Sweden: Lehmanns
Forlag.

Larzelere, R. E., & Johnson, B. (1999). Evaluation of the effects of
Sweden's spanking ban on physical child abuse rates: A literature review.
Psychological Reports, 85, 381-392.

Sanden, A., & Lundgren, L. (1997). Spanking of children much less common.
Statistika centralbryan. http://www.scb.se/scbeng/vhtm/barnaga.htm

Statistics Sweden. (1996). Spanking and other forms of physical punishmen=
t
(Demography, the Family, and Children 1996:1.2). Stockholm, Sweden.

Westerberg, S. (1999, June 19). Lecture to the Family Education Trust,
London. .

Wittrock, U. (1992). Barmisshandel i kriminalstatstiken 1981-1991 [Violen=
t
crimes against children in criminal statistics, 1981-1991]. KR Info, 1992=
,
7.

Wittrock, U. (1995). Barnmisshandel, 1984-1994 [Violent crimes against
children, 1984-1994]. KR Info, 1-6.


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-------
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You may copy, download, and print this article from this site so long as
you include this web address, use it only for personal, non-commercial
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t
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Copyright 2000 Robert E. Larzelere, All Rights Reserved
http://people.biola.edu/faculty/paulp/

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Doan


On 22 Feb 2005, Kane wrote:

The effect of spanking bans in Sweden:

http://4forums.com/political/showpos...ostcount=3D137
"

Thread: Is spanking a form of child abuse?
View Single Post
#137
Old 05-20-2004, 02:44 AM
mizmaxx's Avatar
mizmaxx mizmaxx is offline
Registered User

Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 830
Quote:
Originally Posted by King Triton
And it is funny how you are given proof that it failed miserably in
Sweden,but you choose to ignore the facts and spout off that only 1
study doesn`t prove anything.How about the increase in
crime,assaults,etc.

Well, since you asked- (emphasis mine)
Child Abuse in Sweden
By Joan E. Durrant, Ph.D. 1
April 9, 2003

For a number of years, various media have carried reports stating that
child abuse has increased in Sweden since the passage of the 1979
corporal punishment ban. This statement, which was recently given new
life in the Canadian Charter Challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal
Code, is completely erroneous. All available evidence indicates that
Sweden has been extremely successful in reducing rates of child
physical abuse over the past few decades and that reduction has been
maintained since the passage of the corporal punishment ban. The
purpose of this brief report is to disseminate accurate information on
this issue.

1. Reporting Rates vs. Rates of Actual Abuse
The claim that child abuse has increased in Sweden is primarily based
on misinterpretation of assault report statistics. It is the case that
reporting of child physical assault has increased in Sweden since the
1970s - as it has in every nation that has raised awareness of the
issue of child abuse. Reporting rates are by no means equivalent to
rates of actual abuse. They are sharp reflections of/strongly tied to
shifts in public awareness.

For example, in the early 1960s, it was estimated that about 300
children were being maltreated in the U.S. By 1990, the U.S. Advisory
Board on Child Abuse and Neglect had officially recorded 2.4 million
reported cases. By 1993, they had recorded almost 3 million cases. It
is highly unlikely that actual child maltreatment increased by a factor
of 10,000 in that period. It is also highly unlikely that only 300
children were maltreated in the U.S. in the early 1960s.

It is a well-known fact that when mandatory reporting laws, public
education campaigns, and other measures are implemented to increase
awareness, reporting will increase. This is the goal of such measures.
The Swedish reporting figures have been cited as if they are actual
rates of abuse, which they are not.

Recently the Swedish National Crime Prevention Council examined 434
cases of assaults on young children within the family that were
reported to the police in 1990 (all cases) and 1997 (every other case).
It was found that the proportion of cases involving serious injuries
sustained by children in this age range had decreased substantially.
The majority of reported assaults result in minor injuries or no
injuries at all. On the basis of an extensive analysis of the data, the
National Crime Prevention Council concluded that there has been an
increase in the propensity to report cases of assault on young
children, and that it is this increase that is responsible for most, if
not all, of the rise in the number of such offences reported to the
police@ (Nilsson, 2000, p. 68).

2. Prevalence of Child Physical Assault Across Time
Studies conducted at various points in time demonstrate that the
prevalence, frequency and harshness of assaults against children have
declined dramatically in Sweden over the last two generations.
Substantial proportions of women who became mothers in the 1950s struck
their children at least weekly (e.g., 55% of mothers of 4-year-old
daughters; 20% of mothers of 8-year-old sons) (Stattin et al., 1995).
Among 3- to 5-year-old children of that generation, implements were
used by 13% of mothers (Stattin et al.,1995).

In contrast, 86% of youth who were born in the 1980s report never
having been physically punished (Janson, 2001). Of those who were, the
vast majority experienced it no more than once or twice in their
childhoods (SCB, 1996). Virtually no children are hit with implements
in Sweden today.

It is important to note that legislative reform began many decades ago
in Sweden. The corporal punishment ban was the end, not the beginning,
of legal changes in that country. Most notably, the provision excusing
parents who caused minor injuries to their children through physical
punishment was repealed from the Swedish Penal Code in 1957. The
explicit ban on physical punishment was implemented 22 years later.

3. Child Abuse Fatalities
The incidence of homicides of children under the age of 5 can provide
an estimate of child abuse mortality, as it is these children who are
most vulnerable to fatal injury and the contribution of other forms of
external violence is minimized among this age group. Between 1975 and
2000, the average annual number of homicides of children aged 0 to 4 in
Sweden was 4. The average incidence between 1995 and 2000 (2.8) was
lower than that between 1975 and 1980 (4.0) - despite population
growth.

The World Health Organization (2002) provides homicide incidence
figures for children aged 0 to 4 in Sweden (1996), Canada (1997) and
the United States (1998).2 These figures a

Sweden: 3
Canada: 24
United States: 723

(Canada's population is approximately 3 times larger than Sweden's. The
U.S. population is approximately 20 times larger than Sweden's.)

Child homicides attributable specifically to physical abuse (excluding
homicide-suicides, neonaticide and postnatal depression) are virtually
non-existent in Sweden. Between 1976 and 2000 (the most recent year for
which statistics are currently available), a total of 4 children died
in Sweden as a result of physical abuse.

Summary
There is no evidence to support the claim that child abuse has
increased in Sweden since corporal punishment was banned there in 1979.
In fact, Sweden has maintained a very low rate of child abuse
internationally for more than 25 years.

Three Important Points

1. It is important to note that Sweden's law was intended to affirm
children's rights; it was not expected to end all abuse of children for
all time. North American assault laws have not eliminated assaults
against adults, yet we recognize their importance in setting a standard
of non-violence for the society, sending a clear message, and affording
protection to those who have been harmed. This was the fundamental
intent of Sweden's corporal punishment ban.

2. Legislative reform in Sweden began in 1928, when corporal punishment
was forbidden in secondary schools. It was 1957 when the legal defence
of reasonable correction was repealed from Sweden's Penal Code. The ban
must be viewed within its historical context to be understood.

3. Since Sweden passed its ban on corporal punishment in 1979, 10 other
nations have followed: Finland, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Cyprus,
Croatia, Latvia, Israel, Germany, and Iceland. The purpose of these
bans is to explicitly recognize children's rights to protection under
the law - the same rights that adults take for granted. In addition,
Italy's highest court has ruled that "the use of violence for
educational purposes can no longer be considered lawful."

1 Joan E. Durrant, Ph.D., is a Child-Clinical Psychologist and
Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Family Studies at the
University of Manitoba. She is an internationally recognized expert on
the Swedish ban. Over the past decade, she has conducted extensive
research on this law and has lived in Sweden for extended periods to
gain a full understanding of its history, implementation and effects.

2 Rates per population are not available for Sweden and Canada due to
their low incidence. Incidence rates are presented here for the most
recent years for which data were available in the WHO World Report on
Violence and Health (2002).

References
Nilsson, L. (2000). Barnmisshandel: En Kartl=E4ggning av Polisanm=E4ld
Misshandel av Sm=E5 Barn. Brottsf=F6rebyggande r=E5det; Stockholm.

Janson, S. (2001). Barn och Misshandel. A Report to the Swedish
Governmental Committee on Child Abuse and Related Issues. Statens
Offentliga Utredningar; Stockholm.

SCB (1996). Spanking and Other Forms of Physical Punishment: Study of
Adults=3D and Middle School Students=3D Opinions, Experience, and
Knowledge.@ Demografiska Rapporter, 1.2.

Stattin, H., Janson, H., Klackenberg-Larsson, I., & Magnusson, D.
(1995). ACorporal punishment in everyday life: An intergenerational
perspective. (J. McCord, ed.) Pp 315-347. Cambridge University Press;
Cambridge.

World Health Organization (2002). World Report on Violence and Health.
Author; Geneva.
.................................................. ..............

Kane: reasoned argument on this issue is scarce to invisible here.
Overlooked are the many factors that contribute to abuse of children.
Spanking is only ONE of those. Child deaths from abuse in Sweden, for
instance, has dropped from 4 (that's not a rate folks but a whole
number) to 2 in recent years.

More thoughtful approaches to the concept of non-punitive parenting
show in this article below. It also helps us see the history of what
culminated in the spanking ban by law:

http://www.bo.se/adfinity.aspx?pageid=3D90#

Utskrivet fr=E5n www.bo.se
The Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban

For more than twenty years, the corporal punishment ban has been
effective in Sweden. The Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban was passed in
1979 - ten years before the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -
and was the result of more than 50 years of legislative and
opinion-forming efforts related to child abuse.

Corporal punishment was first banned in the Swedish grammar schools in
1927. Similar legislation was passed for elementary schools in 1958 and
banned totally in 1962 in the Education Act. By 1966, parents and those
responsible for children were forbidden from hitting their children.

A corporal ban
Ten years later, a decision in a court case concerning a father
assaulting his three-year-old daughter was widely discussed. The case
initiated a number of private member=B4s bills in the Swedish parliamen=
t
concerning the need for an explicit prohibition of chastisement, but it
wasn't until 1979 that the Swedish Parliament adopted a bill, with 256
MPs voting for and 6 MPs voting against.

The arguments against were that the proposal was unnecessary and even
dangerous. By removing the rights for parents to chastise the child,
many well-meaning parents would be stamped as criminals and many
children would never learn to behave. But one of the MPs said; "In a
free democracy like our own, we use words as arguments, not blows. We
talk to people and do not beat them. If we can=B4t convince our childre=
n
with words, we shall never convince them with violence". This has
become a rather famous statement in Sweden and one, of which it is not
very easy to oppose.

The ban is now an act within Chapter 6 in the Parenthood and
Guardianship Code, which expressively forbids physical punishment and
degrading treatment. "Children are entitled to care, security and a
good upbringing. Children are to be treated with respect for their
person and individuality and may not be subjected to corporal
punishment or any other humiliating treatment."

The Criminal Code
The Code of Parenthood and Guardianship in which one finds the law
against chastising children is a civil law as opposed to the Criminal
code. This means that the prohibition to use corporal punishment is not
in itself sanctioned. It=B4s the Criminal Code that decides whether or
not an offence has been committed, but also that it is judged under the
same rules which apply when adults commits acts of physical violence to
adults or other people=B4s children. The Criminal Code states that
anyone who causes another person physical injury, illness or pain or
other harmful condition is to be convicted to a fine or prison up to
two years. (Up to ten years if the crime is to be considered as severe,
for example if the victim is a child). When comparing figures from
other countries, including the Nordic countries, we find that corporal
punishment towards children is lower in Sweden. This seems above all to
concern less serious and average forms of corporal punishment whilst
more serious forms, such as blows with a blunt object may still be as
common as in other Nordic countries.

Shifts in attitude
We know that there has been a shift in attitude and opinion in Sweden
on corporal punishment and that it started even before the law was
effective. The Swedish Institute for Statistics has regularly
investigated attitudes in the population towards corporal punishment.
In 1965, 53% were positive towards corporal punishment of children,
1968-42%, 1971-35%, 1981-26% and 1994-11%. Hence, today in Sweden
probably less than 10% are positive to the use of corporal punishment.
The younger population is much less in favour of using physical
punishment than elder generations. This shows that the ban is widely
supported and well known in Sweden even amongst young children. In
1979, a special brochure was sent out to every household in the
country, explaining the anti spanking ban and how to bring up children
with other methods than physical punishment. The brochure was
translated into several different languages.

Statistics prove that corporal punishment as a way of upbringing has
substantially decreased. When comparing figures in interviews with
parents between the years 1980 and 2000, the results show, that
corporal punishment has decreased significantly, especially in regard
to striking a child with ones fist, with a blunt object or giving the
child a so called "good hiding". The figures are in accordance with
results from two other studies on intermediate-level pupils and twenty
year-olds submitted by the Parliamentary Committee against Abuse
towards Children. This means, that forceful corporal punishment, which
may potentially harm the child, also has decreased significantly. On
the other hand, concerning serious and unusual forms of corporal
punishment, such as threats or the use of knives or firearms, the level
shows no decrease. One reason could be, that malignant forms of
corporal punishment, most often is part of a strong deviant behaviour
in the adult as a result of mental illness or a case of abnormality or
flaw in the character- personality features which are probably very
little affected by general changes of attitude in society.

Uncertainty
As more and more people tend to report child abuse, it has become
somewhat confusing as to whether child abuse in Sweden in reality has
increased during the last decades. We know that much of the violence,
which was "invisible" in the past, now has come out into the open, but
thanks to education, information about the anti-spanking law and the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, awareness has increased in
society concerning children's needs and violence towards children.
Today, institutions like schools and day-care centres including
professional groups, which come into contact with children, have a
mandatory obligation to report if they consider that a child is at risk
and in need of support from the social welfare system. The conclusion
therefore, is that the increase of reports of child abuse is an effect
of increased awareness, rather than an increase of actual violence
towards children.

Complex area
This is a complex area that has to be put in its right context. The
issue of child abuse and neglect is not only relevant to changes in
legislation, but also to the changes in society that have occurred,
during more than twenty years of existing legislation. There are groups
of children who are deprived and in vulnerable situations and families
where child abuse and neglect is more or less a constant element. These
kinds of families will probably occur in any society regardless of
corporal punishment bans.
"
Kane

Even if banning spanking DID lead to a reduction in
Child Abuse, it does not make such government
intrusion legally or morally right.

Government in general has proved to be so
unabashedly INEPT at whatever it does that the
LAST place government needs to interfere is
in how parents raise their children.

Is the INTENT of such extremes of government
intrusion to make rule by THE STATE much
more acceptable, paving the way for total
SOCIALISM?

Must people be so COWED by government that
they accept such intrusions in the name of
a purported or actual "good cause"?

Do the ends justify the intrusive means?

High Courts in the USA have decided that they do not.

Child Protection agencies, eager for more bodies and
therefore more FUNDING, seek endless expansion
into any imagineable province of family life.

Our society has become so debased that basic
right and wrong no longer matter, and are matters
brought up for debate, to be MANIPULATED and
conned around by the devious.

The collapse of mighty Enron brought about a
wave of corporations displaying a Code Of
Ethical Conduct and holding employee training
on ethics.

I have reason to believe that in many of these
companies it is more of a PR move and a tactic
to avoid some litigation, rather than anything
heartfelt or truly adhered to.

What happens when it looks smarter for
the company to "lawyer up" than to do what
their ethical code promises?

Right and wrong just don't matter in our
culture of competing self interests and
competing AGENCY or Corporate interests.

Tort reform for example, works against citizens
and in favor of corporations.

Sure, it might have advantages, but did
somebody forget that it has DISADVANTAGES also?

The excuses about Big Pharma and other needing to
be protected from big law suits sure don't play well
after recent revelations that FDA has been operating
like a prostitute to the Big Pharma companies.

Why should a doctor who commits truly idiotic
malpractice be protected from law suit payouts?

To encourage more of them to leave hemostats
or sponges in people's guts during surgery?

When a doctor does something that dumb,
WHY protect them from law suit?

Again I say, our society has gotten so far from
basic right and wrong that even something
this blatantly WRONG can be argued for!

Instead of governent enlarging itself into areas
where government has already proven to be
totally incompetent, like the raising of children,
perhaps government should get rid of the
dead weight, Rube Goldberg style entitlements,
circular arguments for itself, and pare down
to the few things that really ARE necessary
and try to do those well.

As it is, the very word government stands for
ineptitute, incompetence and deliberate lies.

Is that the backbone of our moral fibre?

The model for parenting?

Worthy of second guessing anybody?

Greegor wrote:
Even if banning spanking DID lead to a reduction in
Child Abuse, it does not make such government
intrusion legally or morally right.

Which clarifies, brilliantly, your own morals, and your opinion of the
legal rights of others.

Government in general has proved to be so
unabashedly INEPT at whatever it does that the
LAST place government needs to interfere is
in how parents raise their children.

No, actually governments that no long exist prove their ineptitude, not
ones that are in existense, have been for some time, and have
successful prosperous nations. The US seems to qualify. So far. When
the government falls, you get back to me, okay?

Is the INTENT of such extremes of government
intrusion to make rule by THE STATE much
more acceptable, paving the way for total
SOCIALISM?

Nope. It's the intention to remove children from the circumstance of
pain and the bad outcomes that so often accompany such experiences.

Must people be so COWED by government that
they accept such intrusions in the name of
a purported or actual "good cause"?

No, that is not true. That is your fantasy. Most people do a great deal
of definance of government. It's a custom in many countries, even
highly oppressive ones where it's dangerous to do so. China comes to
mind. France. England..oh dear, now there is an interestingly sly
people. They can look and talk sooooo compliant, while they are among
the most bloody minded of all. I like'em of course. Some of my
ancestors you see...........r r r r r..

Do the ends justify the intrusive means?

Yes, sometimes they do. If you are being beaten would you suggest the
cop driving by not intrude, since she is a government agent?

Same goes for kids that are being beaten, starved, raped, or otherwise
abused.

High Courts in the USA have decided that they do not.

No, that is false. It is only certain circumstances, no blanket
decision that children should not be protected from abuse and neglect.

Child Protection agencies, eager for more bodies and
therefore more FUNDING, seek endless expansion
into any imagineable province of family life.

Nonsense. They do not drive legislation nearly as much as private
non-profits that support child welfare and safety. CPS tends to, in
fact, try to get laws made LESS intrusive and more clearly definable.

Our society has become so debased that basic
right and wrong no longer matter, and are matters
brought up for debate, to be MANIPULATED and
conned around by the devious.

The cry of the criminal from time out of mind.

It's the old, "I want to do things my way and not be stopped or have to
pay for it" bull****.

The collapse of mighty Enron brought about a
wave of corporations displaying a Code Of
Ethical Conduct and holding employee training
on ethics.

Which has what to do with your claim?

I have reason to believe that in many of these
companies it is more of a PR move and a tactic
to avoid some litigation, rather than anything
heartfelt or truly adhered to.

Well, boyoh, that's the nature of humanity, now isn't it? We do tend to
move away from pain, and toward pleasure. We share that with other
organic forms of life.

You are a prime example. Look at your history.

What happens when it looks smarter for
the company to "lawyer up" than to do what
their ethical code promises?

They get sued some more. More go to trial and prison.

Right and wrong just don't matter in our
culture of competing self interests and
competing AGENCY or Corporate interests.

Nonsense. You are smokin' again.

Tort reform for example, works against citizens
and in favor of corporations.

Yep. So? You want the right to sue without restraint untouched, right?

Why?

Why not suggest a sensible tort reform that might work better than one
being considered?

I'll tell you why you don't. Because you want to be free to do anything
you wish without restraint. You have what I've seen so many times
before, behind walls of prisons. A criminal thought pattern.

Sure, it might have advantages, but did
somebody forget that it has DISADVANTAGES also?

Another brilliant revelation. Careful, don't hurt yourself with all the
heavy lifting.

The excuses about Big Pharma and other needing to
be protected from big law suits sure don't play well
after recent revelations that FDA has been operating
like a prostitute to the Big Pharma companies.

Yep. What do you suggest, short of YOU coming out with a fortune you've
defrauded the public of?

Why should a doctor who commits truly idiotic
malpractice be protected from law suit payouts?

I beg your pardon? What in tort reform keeps him or her from being
sued?

To encourage more of them to leave hemostats
or sponges in people's guts during surgery?

Again with the sick assumptions. I have never heard anything that would
suggest to me a doctor wants to leave operations botched. So they could
hardly be encouraged by tort reform.

When a doctor does something that dumb,
WHY protect them from law suit?

You seem to be laboring under the idea that "tort reform" means
something it doesn't. It's about caps, not total rejection.

Again I say,

Oh brother.

our society has gotten so far from
basic right and wrong that even something
this blatantly WRONG can be argued for!

Tell us the answer, oh wise one. What shall we do?

Bring back lynching and let you clean out the perps pockets before
hanging?

Instead of governent enlarging itself into areas
where government has already proven to be
totally incompetent, like the raising of children,
perhaps government should get rid of the
dead weight, Rube Goldberg style entitlements,
circular arguments for itself, and pare down
to the few things that really ARE necessary
and try to do those well.

Boy, talk about "Rube Goldberg." Your one sentence paragraph is a
perfect model for the convuluted useless complexity of one of his
devices.

As it is, the very word government stands for
ineptitute, incompetence and deliberate lies.

I just love how you folks simply assign values and claims as though
they made your claim valid. No proof. Not logical argument. Nothing but
babbling.

Is that the backbone of our moral fibre?

Aren't you glad you have somewhere to spout after you've taken on a
load?

The model for parenting?

Government is not supposed to be a parent.

Worthy of second guessing anybody?

It's their job. We tell them "second guess" that is to predict and to
forsee possible harm, and do things to help avoid the harm.

You don't understand government very well, now do you?

But that's obvious to anyone that has covered your "career" in
government so far, R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R.

Kane

Kane:
In Machiavelli's "The Prince", principles of the
survival of a government did NOT prove that
proficiency, qualification, capability or cleverness
existed in any OTHER ways.

Government is almost universally inept, rotten,
incapable, corrupt, even imbecilic.

Simply surviving does not disprove that.

Hitler was a Machiavellian success.

The message of Machiavelli was that even a
horrible government was better than the
damage done by a regime change.

Notice that Machivelli himself implied rather
negative qualities inherent in government.

In a supposedly free society, even bringing
up the Machiavellian justification is so extremely
UNAMERICAN as to be obscene.

The Machiavelli justification is counter to
democratic reform and control of the government
by the people rather than vice versa.

You presume that to understand government
is to work inside it and have the bureaucratic
agency interest at heart.

Shouldn't our government be customer driven?

Greegor wrote:
Kane:
In Machiavelli's "The Prince", principles of the
survival of a government did NOT prove that
proficiency, qualification, capability or cleverness
existed in any OTHER ways.

What has survival got to do with my post?
I look for effectiveness. So far, so good, for ours.

Government is almost universally inept, rotten,
incapable, corrupt, even imbecilic.

Yep. And the better it looks usually the worse it is. It's our
apparently stumplebum system that is working so much better than most
when it comes to individual and collective freedoms.

You haven't traveled have you?

Simply surviving does not disprove that.

Nor did I mention simply surviving as the sole factor to consider. What
a government produces for its people is the key.

I've seen many other government systems at work. The only one, oddly
enough, that I think comes close to ours for effectiveness is also,
from the outside and by the ignorant, seen as clumsy. That is the
French system of governance today.

Geez, what a mess, but a lot of french people enjoy a lot of personal
and collective freedom because of that messy system. Not as good as
ours, but hey, we are pretty damn good.

Hitler was a Machiavellian success.

Yep. You didn't see me saying that was the system I admired, did you?
In fact I consider you fools more likely to bring on a fascist system
than the messy one I support.

Do you remember I used to say that Dan was successful precisely because
our system, as reflected in CPS workings, was so prone to mistakes? And
at the same time I said that you fools are pressing for a system that
is more "perfect."

It's much harder to misuse the clumsy system we have than the
perfection that is fascism's goal.

The message of Machiavelli was that even a
horrible government was better than the
damage done by a regime change.

Could you qoute some passages to help me remember that. I seem to have
forgotten.

Notice that Machivelli himself implied rather
negative qualities inherent in government.

"Rather?" You are so stupid when you pretend to be educated.

In a supposedly free society, even bringing
up the Machiavellian justification is so extremely
UNAMERICAN as to be obscene.

Then why did you? I did not, you'll notice.

The Machiavelli justification is counter to
democratic reform and control of the government
by the people rather than vice versa.

YOU claimed my "justification" was Machiavellian. Prove it.

You presume that to understand government
is to work inside it and have the bureaucratic
agency interest at heart.

No I don't. I work outside it, always have, and give it hell when it's
appropriate. The difference between myself and you twits, the
quadsquad, is that I don't lie to criticize it. I know I don't have to.
There will always be, as I have said time and again, more than enough
error to require a high degree of diligent oversight by the collective
population being served.

Shouldn't our government be customer driven?

It is, dummy. It can't operate though as a pure democracy (what you
seem to be saying with "customer driven").

Two reasons: One, that such systems are vulnerable immediately upon
their inception to be taken over by strongmen and their thugs. I liken
you fools to such a crowd;

Two; chaos ensues when everyone "gets their way at once" which is what
opens such a system to tyrants with the cunning and strength to usurp
the democracy.

The sloppy representative democracy is much harder to take over. It's
built to protect the both the minority from the majority, and the
majority from the minority.

Our system even has subsystems for that. Take "caselaw" for instance.

Look at how we make our legislators vote on certain parts of
legislation. Look at what it takes to ratify the constitution. All
calculated to not allow for too easy a takeover of the system by
factions..like yours. The nutsos of the world.

And the dangerous.

Give me slop in government all the time.

In fact I'm not liking the more efficient methods I see currently being
instigated. But they will fall next election. Such things have been
tried in the past. Even today I can refuse, for instance, to allow my
SS number to be used to track me, if I wish.

I can make anyone asking for it use a number of my own devising for
their book and record keeping. I do so.

In fact you are communicating with a long time rebel...quasi
libertarian, I'd have to call myself. Not quite the extremist I think
the died in the wool ones are, but then I've always been hard to pin
down, and am not a joiner of any kind.

You, on the other hand, are an ignorant fool, eager and ripe for the
picking for little demigogs to use you. You demonstrate it here. It's
your vicious greed. Your corruption of ethics and morals that make you
so.

Sad, idnit?

Kane

Kane,

More and more countries are concluding that hitting children is indeed
violence. Hitting has no place in successfully raising children.

There are so many non-violent strategies for discipline that I fail to
understand why the US is so committed to the practiced of violent
discipline.

LaVonne

Kane wrote:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_...story_id=16923

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb
"
Parents banned from smacking children


14 February 2005

AMSTERDAM - In a proposal that will ban the giving of disciplinary
smacks, the Dutch Cabinet has decided to outlaw all forms of violence
against children to combat child abuse.

Cabinet ministers decided on Friday that parents will in future be
explicitly obligated by law to care for their children and to raise
them without emotional or physical violence.

....more at the available links.....

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb

[[[ Some interesting thinking in this law and it's creation ]]]

Breaches of regulations can lead to supervision from welfare
authorities or the loss of custody. In more serious cases, culprits can
be jailed at the order of a court.

In several other European countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Germany
and Austria - where all forms of violence against children is a
criminal offence - evidence is starting to be gathered indicating
that the law leads to a reduction in the number of child abuse cases.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

http://tinyurl.com/6uvlb

Notice the outcomes.....indications that the law leads to reduction in
the number of child abuse cases.

Kane