KEY POINTS:
After my last epistle on parenting and the repeal of section 59, a reader asked how many children I have. Three, I said, thinking how much more impressive it would have been for my parenting credentials if I'd been able to say seven.
But with only three, I
felt bound to add, a touch defensively, that they were nice kids and not the out-of-control spoilt brats who, we're constantly told, are running amok in the country's supermarkets.
Truth is, I'd have had more children if they didn't come with such a hefty price tag. In the early years, when I took a decade off to concentrate on childrearing, having never been that good at multi-tasking, we counted the costs in lost income - not to mention lost sleep and the last vestiges of unburdened, unwrinkled youth.
These days we can itemise the costs with scary precision. We're still recovering from the start of the school year, when we considered taking out a second mortgage to pay for uniforms and stationery.
Meanwhile, we're ignoring the invoices asking for our school fees, payment for a school camp, sports fees, and a school trip to New York - yes, New York.
And are we complaining? Well, yes. But we're paying nevertheless, for as I've told my children repeatedly, they are our retirement plan.
I know it's de rigueur to say children are our future but mine really are. We've sunk a lot of time and money into them, and in the time-honoured Pacific tradition I fully expect them to look after me in my twilight years.
Of course, everyone talks about investing in children, but more often than not it's just lip-service. Will we be able to say in 10 or 15 years time that we've done everything we could have done in this country to take care of all our children?
Not on the evidence so far.
Take that Unicef report which placed New Zealand at the bottom of the OECD for children dying from accidents or injury, and in the bottom third for immunisation rates, teenage pregnancies, the length of time parents spent with their kids, and having parents out of work.
Or the lament of Family Court chief judge Peter Boshier about the increasing callousness of young offenders - many born just after National's tough love programme of benefit cuts and market rents.
Or the 2006 report of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services, which gave us three out of 10 for the care and protection of children, and urged all political parties to publicly acknowledge "the collective responsibility of all New Zealanders to ensure the care and protection of all children".
The council said "poverty, social exclusion and family violence" was a continuing reality for too many children.
So I'd really rather not talk about smacking again, except that as Maori Party leader Tariana Turia noted in a speech last month, "the decision to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act is exactly the type of investment we need to be making if we are committed to our children living in an environment free of violence".
It was critical that "a line in the sand be drawn ... the time has come for a strong message of no hitting to be promoted in every possible way".
And hardly anyone disagrees with that. MPs from all sides of the House accept that Parliament needs to send a clear message "to lower the threshold of violence against children in this country"; that section 59 was being "used as a shield to conviction by some parents and guardians who have obviously abused their children"; and that children should have the same protection as adults under this country's law.
So what's the problem?
For Turia it's the fear that Maori and Pacific Island parents are the ones most likely to be "targeted and criminalised".
But given the higher risk of abuse for Maori and Pacific Island children, it's fair to say that this is where the message needs to be heard loudest.
A doctor, arguing against Sue Bradford's bill, tells me that he's witnessed frequent and inappropriate use of physical discipline against children by Maori and Pacific Island parents, that they are "the prime users of excessive physical discipline" and that "this form of physical discipline is well known to result in impulsive violent acts later in life".
I wish I could disagree with that, but I've too often witnessed it myself.
There have been many times I've wanted to intervene, with the full force of the law behind me.
The bill, as amended by select committee, allows parents to forcibly remove a child from danger, or physically restrain them from hurting themselves and others.
Despite the scaremongering, parents won't be prosecuted for enforcing time-out - not under this bill, anyway. That's already covered under Section 209 of the Crimes Act, as a technical kidnapping.
You might have noticed there haven't been many prosecutions under that, either.
