تغییر نگرش عمومی نسبت به تنبیه بدنی: اثرات اصلاحات قانونی در سوئد

Objective: One justification for a statutory ban on physical punishment is that passage of such legislation changes public attitudes towards the use of this form of parental discipline. The experience in Sweden is often cited as an example of legislation which changed public opinion. The aim of this brief article is to review the public opinion findings in Sweden in order to evaluate in greater detail the impact of changing the law. Method: A search was conducted to generate all published and publicly-available quantitative surveys of the public in Sweden and elsewhere. Results: The results of time-series analysis of the data are clear. The 1979 legal reform in Sweden did not reduce the level of public support for parental use of corporal punishment as a means of disciplining children. Support for physical punishment began declining years before the reform was passed and the decline was in no way accelerated by the law reform. Changes in public opinion may have generated the legal reform, but the reverse is not true. Data from other jurisdictions also support the view that there is no relationship between the status of the law and the nature of public views with regard to corporal punishment. This result is consistent with analyses of the effects of legal reforms in other areas. Conclusions: The Swedish ban on corporal punishment did not affect public attitudes. Changing public views requires other initiatives.

IN 1979, SWEDEN passed legislation which effectively abolished corporal punishment as a legitimate child-rearing practice. Proponents of a ban on the use of corporal punishment in the home frequently point to the example of Sweden as a jurisdiction in which legislative reform changed the views (and subsequently disciplinary practices) of the public. The experience in that country is therefore of considerable interest to other jurisdictions considering adopting similar reform legislation. In Canada and New Zealand, for example, attempts have been underway for several years to repeal provisions in these countries’ Criminal Codes which permit parents to administer physical punishment if it is reasonable and for the purpose of correction. A provision (S. 43) of the Canadian Criminal Code protects parents (and persons acting in loco parentis) who physically punish their children from a charge of assault (as long as the application of force is for the purpose of correction and is “reasonable”). A private member’s Bill introduced in 1999 in the Canadian Parliament calls for the repeal of this provision. The effect of the proposed Bill would be to remove this protection against a charge of assault arising from the use of corporal punishment by a parent or person acting in loco parentis. At the same time, a constitutional challenge has been launched to the same provision of the Canadian Criminal Code. Similar reform proposals have been advanced in a number of other jurisdictions, including Germany, Poland, Spain, and Scotland. Changing public attitudes towards the use of physical punishment is one of the principal arguments used by advocates of a statutory prohibition. Durrant and Rose-Krasnor (1995a) for example, argue that “law shapes and confirms public values” (p. 37). It is critical therefore, to have an accurate understanding of the effects of the Swedish reform on public opinion. This is a propitious time to revisit the Swedish experience for two reasons. First, after a hiatus of some years, additional data regarding Swedish public opinion with respect to corporal punishment are now available. Second, the public opinion data with respect to corporal punishment have never been assembled in a single article and evaluated. This brief article examines all publicly-available survey data bearing upon this question. Closer inspection of the trends reveals some surprises, and suggests that accepted wisdom with respect to this issue may be in error.