KEY POINTS:
One of the ironies of the past week is that those who've been loudest in their condemnation of child abusers are the same people who, several months ago, were fiercely arguing for the right of parents to hit their children.
There is no connection, they argued, between child
abuse and the physical discipline of children. But, actually, there often is, in the misguided minds of many of those who commit acts of violence against children.
Paediatricians, who bear daily witness to the harm done to New Zealand children, were among those who pointed out in their support of the repeal of Section 59 that most parents and step-parents who abuse their children think they're carrying out discipline sanctioned by society. James Whakaruru was killed in the name of toilet training; so was Ngatikura Ngati, 3, beaten to death in 2006 by his mother and stepfather.
Those who've grown up with the idea that hitting children is good parenting should clearly hear the unequivocal message of the policeman who led the Otara investigation: "Keep your hands off your kids. Don't hit them. It's not on. There's no need for it." Which, in a nutshell, was the message behind Sue Bradford's controversial legislation.
We don't connect the dots, says the former Children's Commissioner Dr Ian Hassall. He says there's a new callousness or indifference, not just among those "outliers" who figure disproportionately in child-abuse statistics. I think the callousness has been here a while - at least since the 1980s, when economic rationalisation overtook social responsibility.
New Zealand prides itself on its ability to care for its most vulnerable citizens. Increasingly, we have become thin on compassion and heavy on condemnation.
It is easy to make a great song and dance about caring for the children of the disenfranchised, when we see their small, damaged bodies on the evening news. But we won't prevent harm to countless other children until we learn to care a little about their parents and the world they inhabit. Broken kids don't usually come from healthy communities.
The former leader of the British Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, has tried to join the dots in Breakthrough Britain, a comprehensive report which suggests ways of halting the social breakdown that's said to cost Britain around £100 billion ($266 billion) a year in family breakdown, educational underachievement and crime.
Duncan Smith's concern isn't just for the broken kids, who are less likely in today's Britain to leave behind their bleak social conditions for a better life, but the broken communities that produce them.
"In the fourth largest economy in the world, too many people live in dysfunctional homes, trapped on benefits. Too many children leave school with no qualifications or skills to enable them to work and prosper. Too many communities are blighted by alcohol and drug addiction, debt and criminality and low levels of life expectancy."
It sounds all too familiar, and indeed, there's nothing startlingly new in the report's findings, which form the basis of policy recommendations to the Conservative Party.
This isn't just another Tory attack on the welfare state, an excuse to blame welfare dependency for all of today's social ills. The report has a compassionate and non-judgmental tone, perhaps because Duncan Smith drew on the knowledge of academics and other experts in the field, and spent hours talking to the people who live and work in Britain's most fractured communities. It backs the view that "society shouldn't write so many people off; we should work to save as many people as we can".
The report recognises that there are five "paths to poverty" - family breakdown, serious personal debt, drug and alcohol addiction, failed education, worklessness, and dependency and that many of them are interconnected. Family breakdown leads to poor outcomes for children, but debt is a significant driver of family breakdown. And high levels of failed education contribute to worklessness and dependency.
Duncan Smith says government must tackle all of these "paths to poverty" at the same time, rather than the usual piecemeal approaches.
The report talks about "tackling the underlying drivers of deprivation, rather than merely treating the consequences of the problem", and tackling it early, so that children get the nurturing they need in the critical first three years of life. It recommends front-loading Child Benefits in the first years of a child's life, especially for parents of "at risk" children, so that more parents can stay at home and care for their children.
It talks of rebuilding stable families and stable communities to create the best possible environment for children, and urges the Government to commit to providing every child with the best possible education. And it recognises that some families need more support than others, not less and says the most vulnerable should be offered services and support "as a matter of absolute priority".
The report's recommendation of tax breaks to encourage marriage and discourage cohabitation has drawn flak from anti-poverty groups. But Duncan Smith says it's simply recommending what works, citing statistics which show that three-quarters of family breakdowns affecting young children involve unmarried parents; and that children who've experienced family breakdown are more likely to fail at school or suffer from drug and alcohol addiction.
I agree with Duncan Smith that while restoring stability in family life is at the heart of rebuilding broken families and communities, it won't happen "unless all the other areas are dealt with at the same time".
