Striking a child is outlawed in Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland but remains legal in England and Northern Ireland. Proposals to make physical punishment illegal have just been dropped in Northern Ireland – similar plans were abandoned in England last year.
Alba, Cymru, and Éire showing compassion for their population as usual. I'm curious what the justification for dropping such proposals were. "Can't even give your own kids a good beating these days. It's political correctness gone mad!"?
I was struck regularly as a child. Even if some of us "turned out fine" (and there's people who didn't), there's more to it than how we are 20, 30, 40 years down the line. Especially when parents get carried away in the heat of the moment and go further than they intended.
The way some adults interact with children it's like they think children have the memories of goldfish. Like they're some other species. A pet or something, until they reach around 16-18. Children are just small inexperienced people, they still experience the present, pain, and emotions. Not only do they experience that but they now have a paradox in their heads of "this person is my care giver and yet also beats me".
It's fucked up. It's authoritarian. Obedience through violence. And it's even more fucked up that two parliaments have dropped proposals to stop it.