At first, my father apologised for what he was doing. I resisted, but I forgave him and even felt relieved as I thought he would not touch me again. Yet, the beatings didn’t stop. He apologised for a second time, and I forgave him again. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that it was becoming a pattern. At the global level, efforts to end physical punishment of children have been underway for half a century. The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) guarantees children protection from “all forms of physical or mental violence … while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child” [ 18]. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has explicitly identified physical punishment as a form of violence, calling its elimination “a key strategy for reducing and preventing all forms of violence in societies” [ 19]. The Committee has called on all State parties to the CRC to monitor their progress towards eliminating physical punishment, and to conduct research with children and their parents/carers to assess its prevalence and attitudes toward it [ 19]. Most recently, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set a target of eliminating all forms of violence against children (Target 16.2) [ 20]. In recognition of children’s rights to be protected from violence including corporal punishment, and in support of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, there has been an increased need for prevalence data and evidence that can inform effective prevention strategies [ 20].

Globally, the most pervasive forms of violence against children are physical and emotional punishment committed by their parents and other caregivers [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Over the past two decades, mounting evidence indicates that physical (also called corporal) punishment is harmful to children and has no known benefits [ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. It has consistently been shown to be a risk factor for injury, aggression, anti-social behavior, mental health problems, poor parent–child relationships, slower cognitive development, and violence towards partners and children later in life [ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a statement explicitly recommending against any physical or emotional punishment, including spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, insulting, humiliating, and shaming [ 16]. Similarly, in 2019, the Canadian Paediatric Society published a position statement stating, “At no time should parents use physical punishment – spanking, slapping, hitting – or behaviour that shames children” [ 17]. For the most part, unless you tamper with [your little factory,] you will hardly be aware that it is working at all. Zolotor AJ, Robinson TW, Runyan DK, Barr RG, Murphy RA. The emergence of spanking among a representative sample of children under 2 years of age in North Carolina. Front Psychiatry. 2011;2:36.I am concerned they are advertising for boys as young as 18.Perhaps what they are doing is legal but we have to be careful with this kind of activity.’’ The prevalence of adolescent-reported and parents’-reported spanking were 46.0% and 39.6%, respectively. The proportions agreeing that spanking is a normal part of parenting were similar among adolescents (22.0%) and parents (18.5%), and were moderately correlated (intraclass correlation = 0.38, SE = 0.038). More than five times as many parents believed that “spanking” is necessary (19.5%) than believed that “hitting” is necessary (3.5%). Parents’ positive spanking beliefs were associated with increased likelihood of adolescent- and parent-reported spanking. Few significant associations were found between sociodemographic variables and parent-reported or adolescent-reported spanking. Conclusions A Sunday Mercury reporter posed as an interested party to arrange an undercover meeting with Bolle at Wolverhampton train station. After clambering out of his red Citroen Berlingo, the arthritic pensioner, who was wearing a baseball cap with Canada on the front, took our reporter to a platform cafe for a coffee.

Hielscher E, Moores C, Blenkin M, Jadambaa A, Scott JG. Intervention programs designed to promote healthy romantic relationships in youth: a systematic review. J Adolesc. 2021;92:194–236. Martin Narey was director general of the prison service when Husband was convicted in 2003. He had been the assistant governor at Deerbolt when Husband was moved there after the arrest of Johnson, and the assistant governor of Frankland. He went on to become CEO of Barnardo's, the charity for vulnerable children. I would walk out the door limping, trying to get support from a table, the railing, or anything around me. And who knows what might have happened if I had stayed on that path. I might be married now, or I might be a Mandarin-speaking eunuch. But instead, I came across Andy Warhol's silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe in a high-school art textbook. The painter's daughter Cornelia is caned on her hands by her grandmother for framing the maid (and model for the titular painting) for theft.

As if the point weren't clear enough, my Sunday school teacher hammered it home by explaining that sexual sins were among the most grievous, and as proof cited a passage from the Book of Mormon: Bye-Bye Baby: My sister is making a huge mistake by placing her child for adoption.” Posted Oct. 20, 2011.