Their actions are vile and abhorrent - yet only one of them is playing on Sunday.  The child-hitter. Peterson hit his boy so savagely with the switch that he cut the four-year-old's back, bottom, legs and scrotum. Daddy justified it by saying it was the same punishment he got as a kid and it "helped" him in his life.

The good news is that domestic violence against women and children is being discussed around the world. The bad news is that only violence against women is technically illegal. In the land of the free, and in much of the world, parents are allowed to whip and slap their kids with hands, belts and switches. In the US 20 states still allow teachers and headmasters to use corporal punishment and 81% of the population believe some slapping and caning is appropriate.

In a recent article for Time Magazine a psychologist and church minister even made the case for “properly understood and administered spanking”. Dr Jared Pingleton suggested that there is a giant chasm between a spanking properly administered out of love and an out of control adult venting their emotions. He suggests spanking can be carried out with a soft and loving heart and is “most effective as a deterrent to undesirable behaviour for younger pre-schoolers”.  He even quotes from the bible to justify “judicious use of spanking”.

It’s enough to make you use God's name in vain.  

I totally disagree with his differentiation between planned and non-planned parental violence.  Hitting a child is never justified but I understand that many parents have at one time or another lost their temper and given a little tap to their babe's bottom.  Michelle Obama admits she’s done it and I admit I have once or twice and instantly regretted it. In doing it I stuffed up.  I taught my child it's OK to hit while frustrated. I lost face, I lost faith in myself and I lost the moral authority to tell my kids not to hit.

But I feel a child is more likely to understand, forgive and not be scarred by a sudden slap on the bottom (which is regretted and apologised for) than a thought-out, cool, calm, planned spanking.  An organised, spanking seems too ritualised, too relished and too cruel. It sends a worse message than a parent regretfully lashing out, it teaches a child that violence is OK and powerful when preconceived and organised. It also shows children the power of stripping someone of their dignity. 

I know boys who were caned at school. They laugh about it now, 30 years later, they joke about the "sick, perverted" master who loved to humiliate and hurt them on their bare bottoms.  Yet the laughs don't hide the infuriation and injustice still alive in their eyes.  I don’t remember much about my easy childhood but I do remember the day my mother chased me with a wooden spoon. I know she was at her wit's end, not actively thinking.  A planned whack would have made that memory much worse.

There’s quite a cultural chasm about spanking in the US. The debate touches on class, race and religion. Perhaps in ways we do not fully understand.

Yet I feel the US is on the wrong side of history. Spanking kids is illegal in 36 countries – Sweden was the first to ban it in 1979 and Brazil and Malta did so this year.  It’s still legal in the US, African and Asian nations (even the use of belts and paddles), it's legal in Canada but only by parents or guardians as long as the child is between 2 and 12 and hit only with hands. In the UK spanking is legal if it doesn’t leave a mark on the body. In Australia it’s banned from schools but legal in the home provided it’s "reasonable".

I find it incredible that it's only reasonable and legal to hit the most vulnerable people in our society. 

But we could be close to change.    

This year the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which represents 14,000 doctors from Australia and New Zealand, called for it to be made illegal for parents to physically punish their children. RACP says compelling evidence reveals long-term negative effects of physical punishment. Here is their position statement if you care to read it.

The research the doctors cite shows children given regular physical punishment are more likely develop increased fear, mistrust, aggressive behaviour and mental health problems later in life. They are also more likely to experience problems with anger, to exhibit aggression and to have problems with crime and violence. Plus hitting doesn’t work. Countries that have banned it haven't seen an outbreak of naughtiness. New Zealand reports less abuse and earlier intervention for vulnerable children.

And then there’s the hypocrisy. How are boys belted by their father meant to learn that it's never OK to hit a woman?  How are girls given smacks meant to learn it’s never OK to be hit?  As British psychologist Penolope Leach says, "When a big child hits a small child in the playground, we call him a bully; five years later he punches a woman for her handbag and is called a mugger; later still, when he slugs a workmate who insults him, he is called a troublemaker; but when he becomes a father and hits his tiresome, disobedient or disrespectful child, we call him a disciplinarian."

Children are vulnerable, they are dependent upon us, they are smaller than us, they are learning from us.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child specifies that states must protect children from all forms of violence, including physical violence. Allowing adults to inflict physical punishment on children is a clear violation of this international convention, to which Australia is a signatory. The UN Committee that monitors countries’ implementation of the Convention regularly recommends that Governments amend their laws and ban corporal punishment.

I know the world is violent. I know we are heading into war. I know football has boof. But let's condemn domestic violence in all forms. 

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