MEDIA RELEASE
15 June 2009
Commission Research on Smacking More Wasted Spending

Family First NZ is dismissing the latest research from the Families Commission as more wasted spending on information which tells us nothing new.

Otago University researchers will try and argue that their research of only 99 mums and 18 dads proves that smacking is ineffective - yet they can just look down the corridor to find research, also from Otago University, which found that children who were smacked in a reasonable way had similar or slightly better outcomes in terms of aggression, substance abuse, adult convictions and school achievement than those who were not smacked at all.

“The Children’s Issue Centre is simply a closet lobby group for the anti-smacking brigade,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “They have been well known for letting their ideology get in the way of independent and thorough research, and hosted a conference of anti-smacking lobby groups including discredited Canadian researcher Joan Durrant.”

“The supposed claim from this research - that parents don’t find smacking effective - can also be applied to all other methods of discipline used by parents.”

“The far more substantial and thorough Ministry of Health’s 2006/2007 NZ Health Survey (“A Portrait of Health”) found that telling a child off was the most common form of discipline (62% of parents) yet was considered most effective by only 19% of parents who used it. 40% of parents admitted yelling but only 3.7% considered it most effective, and ‘time out’ was used 50% of the time yet only a 1/3’rd of parents who used it considered it most effective.”

“Parenting isn’t for cowards but the expectations and laws being placed on parents is sure making it scary,”says Mr Mccoskrie.

“It’s time we started acknowledging the difficult role of parenting, and supporting them –rather than eyeing them with suspicion and submitting to the organizations who are the self-appointed experts on child rearing,” says Mr McCoskrie. “It’s also time we targeted the real causes of child abuse and the rotten parents who are putting their kids at risk,”

ENDS

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