Note about this post Currently New Zealand parents have a defence from convictions of assault for hitting their children by arguing that they used force for correction and the force was reasonable under the circumstances. This defence Section 59 of the Crimes Act. Over the last couple of years a bill to repeal Section 59 has been winding its way to becoming a law. I’ve written about this on my blog a bit, but generally not cross-posted on Alas, because I think they’d require too much explaining. The law has now all but passed, and in a couple of months children will have almost the same protection from assault as everyone else (there were a couple of compromises along the way).
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There was another letter in the paper today about Section 59 and education. I’ve noticed a few letters that argue what is needed along side the repeal of Section 59 is more parenting classes.
In objecting to these letters I’m want to make it clear that I do think learning how to be a parent is important. Learning how to parent is work, it’s devalued work, and it’s work women do. Either learning how to parent is completely ignored (there’s a lot of skill-sharing, and support within women’s networks, particularly mother’s networks) or there’s an idea that it’s unnecessary – neurotic.
But there’s a tone to these letters, a tone that says ‘the reason other people hit their kids is because they’re not educated enough.’ Leaving aside the patronising, offensive implications of that, I just don’t think it’s true.
I’m the oldest of four children and my parents were better at parenting by the time my little sisters came along. Partly that was about learning and experience, my parents had a much better idea of what they were doing third and forth time. ((According to my sister our family is Experiment (me), Boy (my brother), Perfection (her), and Overindulgence (our little sister), she calls me ‘speri for short.)) When my littlest sister hit adolescence and started slamming doors, my Mum would say “I don’t know what’s wrong with her” and whichever older sibling was at hand would say “Well she’s thirteen.” There was no-one to do that when I was thirteen; my Mum felt it was about her.
But there’s only half the reason. Just as important was that my parents were much more stressed when I was in adolescence. There were reasons for that stress that were specific to our family. But the stress could have been eased in so many ways if parenting was supported and if non-parenting work didn’t have to always be organised on what the employer wanted, rather than what you could give.
I said last year:
So while I do support the repeal of section 59, it’s ridiculous to look at that in isolation. Parenting will continue to be a job that is much more stressful than it needs to be when it is done in isolation, without adequate support or resources, and children will always be the ones that suffer when their parents are under stress. The law can’t change that.
I’m glad the bill is going to go through. Section 59 said kids didn’t matter when their parents hit them, and if all this law does is reassure one kid that they do matter, then that’s enough for me. But there was a missed opportunity here to talk about parents and what they need. If that had happened then at the very least people wouldn’t be writing to the paper suggesting that all we need is a few parenting classes and maybe we would be demanding a whole lot more.
I don’t know much about the bill or law or anything but I wanted to reply generally that I agree with you about the struggles parents face today.
I spend a LOT of time on a chat board for new mothers. In a lot of ways, I am immersed in all the latest parenting fads and warnings and knowledge, but I don’t especially think it helps me parent any better. It does provide a source of normalcy and support in the sense that I can see that everyone else is floundering just as much as I am, and I most certainly have learned quite a bit – particularly about child products like car seats, etc. Anyway, my point is that I’ve read the parenting books, I have regular visits with a pediatrician who spends the time to answer my questions, I regularly read articles in Pediatrics (the APA Journal). I actually have quite a bit of parenting “education.” That in and of itself does not preclude my fuse getting short when my 2 two year old has been whinning ALL DAY, or throwing tanrtums or whatever. And the length of my fuse is most certainly related to how stressful the rest of my life is. Unfortunately, society is just not really family friendly and that makes parenting harder (and it just keeps getting harder as my baby gets older). In the beginning, parenting is hard because of crazy hormones and sleep deprivation and a lot of guesswork because babies can’t tell you what is wrong. As she gets older the challenges require a lot more thought and careful communication. The amount of emotional and mental energy it takes to be a good parent is clouded by the amount of emotional and mental energy that gets used up in other aspects of life.
It sounds to me like this rhetoric for discussing the lack of education of people who hit their kids is one more way to blame people with a lack of resources for their problems rather than looking at structural influences. I can’t say I’m surprised.
Learning how to parent is work, it’s devalued work, and it’s work women do.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean as opposed to work men do?
I can tell you after working with 11 – 18 year old boys for the last 15 years that it is my observation that boys whose fathers take an active part in their parenting are much better adjusted than boys whose fathers leave it all to their mothers.
What does the new law cover? What are the compromises?
RonF –
By and large I think most children do better when they have 2 active and involved parents than just one, but it’s true that an active and involved father is (unfortunately) not normative at this point in time (though we are getting closer).
While it isn’t right that most women do most of the parenting work (and CERTAINLY not all), it is generally true that we, as a society, generally view parenting as women’s work.
It’s not right, and I believe we should be working to change that, but it’s true. My husband is a very involved father, which I am thrilled about. At this point in time I would say that we pretty much parent 50/50 (sometimes there are certain chores I do more often than he does and vice versa, but we can both pinch hit so to speak). However, that is something we had to actively work toward. We pretty much had to erase 30 years of socialization and peer monitoring in order to get us to 50/50 parenting. I had to stop myself from doing it all (or most of it) and we both had to work to allow him to be more involved. It didn’t magically happen. It ONLY occurred because we both agreed theoretically on the concept of co-parenting rather than primary parenting and then did the work to achieve that goal – and still work on it, though with established routines it’s not as difficult to maintain as it was to get started.
I guess what I’m saying is that I read your post as feeling insulted by Maia’s general statement that parenting is by and large women’s work. I don’t think she meant to insinuate that no men parent ever, she was simply stating an over all cultural trend.
I am interested in providing support to parents so as to minimize abuse, but I also think that the most important first step is criminalizing child abuse, so I’m 100% in favor of repealing Section 59, whatever rhetoric they use to do it.
I think understanding and appreciating the mindset that leads to abuse is important, whether it’s child abuse, sexual abuse, spousal abuse, etc., so that we can change the culture, but it’s tricky, because so often ‘understanding’ becomes mixed up in ‘justification’. I’m certainly not saying that you’re doing that, Maia, just that it’s something that makes discussing abuse of all sorts difficult.
—Myca
Maia (hah! I checked this time!), what are the compromises built into the new law?
I checked the footnote. I’m the 3rd of 3 boys, and I’d say that “overindulgent” would apply more to my older brothers. I was the one that Mom didn’t want to let go of and restrained the most.
I ran into something like that with social services. I knew I was struggling, and they apparently wanted to help, so I was happy to go along with them. Then I realised that their idea of help involved some woman coming round to tell me her personal preferences as if they were gospel truth and another woman coming round to berate me about not having enough furniture. And because I came across frustrated by how little sleep I was getting and how much my daughter cried, they treated me as if I knew nothing about child development – truth was, I just didn’t know enough about social services.
RonF – there were two sets of compromises. The first made clear that normal parenting not intended for correction wouldn’t be defined as assault (ie picking up a screaming toddler and taking it somewhere else). The other wrote into the law the normal police guidelines stating that police have a right not to prosecute if the effect is inconsequential, or something. That is already police policy across the board, but it is specifically written into this law.
The effect is that it’s not legal to hit your kids at all, but you’re not necessarily going to get prosecuted.
Parenting is mainly women’s work, but what I said in this post was learning how to parent is women’s work. From my experience, even when the father is doing a share of the parenting, the mother is still likely to do almost all of learning how to parent. Whether it’s reading parenting books, or talking to her mother for advice, reading parenting blogs, or getting together with other parents. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I would say learning how to parent was more often done by women, than parenting is (and women still do the vast majority of the work).
Generally when I say something is women’s work, I don’t mean it’s intrinsically women’s work (the only things that are intrinsically women’s work are giving birth and breast feeding), but that something is considered women’s work in our society. Usually that means that is devalued, and probably not even considered women’s work.
Kate & Nick – that’s exactly what I mean. There’s this idea that what people need to be good parents is knowledge, and all the knowledge in the world doesn’t lessen the stress (support and resources, now that’d lessen the stress).