New Zealand smacking debate: Letter from Swedish Professor Jacob W. F. Sundberg to Deborah Coddington
|
This letter
is published here with the kind consent of the author. |
Stockholm 11 January 2007
Ms Deborah Coddington
C/o The New Zealand Herald
P.O. Box 32
Auckland
New Zealand
Dear Ms Coddington.
Your article titled “Anti-.smack campaign fails
to pack a punch”, which appears to have been published in the New Zealand
Herald July 30, 2006, has been brought to my attention and I think it calls
from some comments, when read by a Swedish law professor. Indeed, for 7 years I
was professor of Family Law at the University of Stockholm and even published a
rather solid book on the Swedish family law as then it was (Family Law under
change, Stockholm 1969 [Familjerätt i omvandling]). If you study our home page www.ioir.se, you will find a few more works on
the same topic, some of them in English. You refer in your article to Professor
Christian Diesen, who is indeed a law professor at the Faculty of Law of the
University of Stockholm as I am, but Dr Diesen is a Professor of Procedural Law, and not of Family Law or
even Penal Law although he likes to express himself publicly in penal law
matters. His perspective is therefore not necessarily always convincing
when he ventures outside the procedural
law. The fact that he has never heard of Mrs Ruby Harrold-Claesson is therefore
not very surprising, nor does it blacken the reputation of Mrs
Harrold-Claesson. I think that regrettably he has misled you somewhat in the
matters you are discussing.
Mrs Harrold-Claesson is not a typical blond,
blue-eyed Swede. She is a black woman originating from Jamaica, with a
university degree from a French university, and has learnt Swedish and taken a
Swedish law degree. In Swedish legal circles she is somewhat an outsider, with
a keen eye for some Swedish shortcomings. She is very much detested by the
social bureaucracy because she is clever to discover mistakes and misjudgements
on their part in those cases that have been entrusted to her. In a tightly knit
society as the Swedish one, this rubs off into judicial circles as well, but
the difficulties she has experienced there has not prevented her from carrying
on her work nationally and internationally. Consequently, she is a well-known
figure among people who have a quarrel with the social authorities – not the
least among immigrants of her own colouring, and the fact that your referees -
like Dr Diesen - seem so eager to discount her may be a compliment rather than
the opposite.
The Anti-smacking legislation that was adopted
in Sweden in 1979, indeed adopted by a minority Government, eager to cut a
profile politically, was formulated in
a rather disastrous way. It said “A child may not be exposed to corporal
chastisement or other insulting treatment”. (SFS 1979 No 122, adopted 22 March
1979). It does not require any legal training to see that this is a completely
nutty formulation: Most small children do not have sufficient linguistic
command to understand that a comment is ‘insulting’ and there is no bottom age
limit set. In fact, when the matter was brought before the European Commission
of Human Rights in the case Blom and Others vs Sweden (Appl. 8811/79,
inadmissible 13 May 1983, press releases B (80) 14, B (84) 21), the Swedish
Government Agent suggested that the provision was not meant to be taken
seriously, and consequently nothing to complain about. However, it turned out
that personnel in schools and day-homes taught the children that it was
criminal for their parents to spank them or somehow hit them, and the cases
that attracted most publicity was naturally those in which children informed
upon their parents and the parents were subjected to criminal proceedings. It
goes without saying that the atmosphere in such a family thereafter was less
than harmonious, and it was not unnatural that the social authorities thought
it best to take the little informers into public care. A powerful tool had been
put into the hands of the naughty little children, getting into their difficult
teens, and it was often used although, at least in the beginning, these cases
were mostly - but not always - dismissed in the courts. But there were other
informers around - neighbours,
disgruntled spouses, and career-prone social bureaucrats - and the governmental
authorities thought it to be ‘progressive’ to drown the population with
propaganda how good it was that corporal chastisement was outlawed in Sweden.
They even invested resources in producing leaflets in Finnish and other foreign
languages to tell passing tourists that when in Sweden spanking their kids was
not permitted, whatever mischief the kids had done – as e.g. the older ones
beating the younger ones, a rather frequent case. The way Emil was locked up in
the wood cabin in Astrid Lindgren’s popular books was now criminal.
Of course, the usefulness of this kind of
legislation was never put to the test, sociological or other. Nobody has ever
proven that it has done any good to family life or children’s behaviour; such
studies were taboo. To the social bureaucracy, the existence of the legislation
was a triumph, emphasizing their enormous importance and securing good work
opportunities, and the social bureaucracy increased in numbers all the time and
became an important voter group that could not be ignored by the political
parties. Consequently, this ridiculous piece of legislation is still with us.
It should be added that assault and battery - misshandel
in Swedish - was always criminalized in Sweden, but it was not until the arrival
of the anti-spanking provision in 1979 that it went nuts. The principle
proclaimed is that you may not do to your children what you cannot do to your
neighbour or a passer-by in the street.
I do not think that this Swedish legislation
travels well to foreign countries.
Sincerely yours
Jacob W.F. Sundberg
Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus
Professor em. Jacob W. F.
Sundberg
Letter from Swedish
Professor Jacob W. F. Sundberg to Deborah Coddington
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