Hong Kong must ban corporal punishment of children at home

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Hong Kong has not updated the law, unlike those jurisdictions where corporal punishment is completely outlawed. Photo: May Tse

Published: 5:33pm, 23 Jan 2017Updated: 12:42pm, 15 Oct 2020

I refer to Yonden Lhatoo’s column (“Should Hong Kong ban spanking of children at home as well as in school?” January 13). We should and we must impose a blanket ban on spanking children at home.

Children’s best interests have not been served by debates on this subject in society or by government policies.

Lhatoo refers to a comedian who quoted his father saying that “somebody gonna get a-hurt real bad”. Lhatoo’s view that not many children in Hong Kong get “a-hurt real bad” shows exactly why the best interests of the child are not being considered. And this is why the law considers a certain degree of corporal punishment as “reasonable chastisement”.

This prevailing attitude adversely affects the search for a better parenting approach to spare children from being harmed, and it fails to reverse a deterioration in family solidarity.

Situations of child abuse and neglect in Hong Kong are getting worse.

Lhatoo mentioned a 2015 survey showing that about half of the city’s children, aged six to 13, were physically disciplined by their parents. Isn’t that bad enough? These parents used “bare hands as well as handy implements like clothes hangers and rulers to inflict punitive pain”.

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