Spanking is now a thing of the past

Spanking is now prohibited in France. The Senate adopted by show of hands, in a final vote, the Law proposition on the prohibition of ordinary educational violence (VEO). The text had already been adopted by the National Assembly last November. With this legal ban, France becomes the 55th state to ban this practice. This new ban does not result in any penal sanction but aims to empower parents. Concretely what will this “anti-spanking” text change? It adds to the Civil Code a note that will be read at the town hall during weddings, specifies reuters taken up by Le Figaro : “Parental authority is exercised without physical or psychological violence”. This sentence will also appear on the front page of children’s health diaries.

“A symbolic text”

This measure aims to change mentalities and to recall that “violence is not a mode of education”, specified on Twitter the member of the 4th constituency of Val-de-Marne Maud Petit, author of the bill. This is “a symbolic text” which aims to “bring down the right of correction”, according to the member of the MoDem. The measure is expected to settle a debate that has stirred public opinion for years, some deeming it useful for “educating” children, while others consider it as taboo and unnecessary as swear words in children’s mouths.

Sign of the lack of consensus on the subject, the Observatory of ordinary educational violence (VEO) revealed in 2017 that 85% of parents admit to still resorting to spanking (including 71.5% to small slaps).

The ban concerns all ordinary educational violence. Understand: “all the coercive and punitive practices used, tolerated, even recommended in a society, to” educate “children”, according to the bill. This encompasses both physical violence (slapping, pinching, spanking, shaking, throwing, pulling hair, tapping on the ears), as well as verbal (mocking, humiliating remarks, shouts, insults) or even psychological violence (threats, lies, etc. blackmail, guilt).

Educational violence, “a public health problem”

The text defines the VEO as a real “public health problem” whose use can harm the development of the child. The law, tabled in October 2018, recalled that this practice may increase behavioral disorders of children and promote “physical and mental pathologies”, as shown by a WHO report on health and violence from 2002. In 2016, a meta-study from the University of Austin in Texas published in 2016 covering 13 countries and 160,000 children showed that corporal punishment promoted in the children concerned “aggression, a decline in self-esteem, a decline in performance and antisocial behavior”, again invoked the Law proposition.

With the adoption of this measure, France is bringing itself into compliance with European legislation which banned since 2016 corporal punishment of children.

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