Smacking: those Swedes must be crazy!

By Jean-Francis Held, special correspondent in Stockholm

Translation: Ruby Harrold-Claesson, Attorney at law.

Jean-Francis Held was a special correspondent in Stockholm towards the end of the 1970's and the beginning of the 1980's. This article was published in the French magazine L'EXPRESS on September 29, 1979, pages 61 - 63.

The original article is published in the French section of NCHR's Web site. The title of the original article is: "Fessée: ils sont fous, ces Suédois !" This article has been translated into English because it is the article that has received the most visits, viz the grand total of 3 880 hits. (Statistics January 22, 2002).

By 344 votes against 6, the Swedish Parliament put the smacking out the law. One considers even the possibility, for the children, “to divorce" their parents. Madness? Jean-Francis Held answers: French people, do not laugh!

Michel - 12 years - discusses the blow with his girl friend in the vicinity of his home, on the island of Lidingö, in Stockholm. The youngster is smoking a cigarette. A neighbour in her fifties passes by and says indignantly: "My poor little one, you will ruin your health", and so on. The tone goes up. At the end of the argument, Michel tests a low blow.

"How do you like that, you old hag!"

That’s the end of peaceful Sweden. The lady catches the robust Michel by his hair and slaps him back and forth two or three times. That happened last week. "I could have defended myself, said the insolent boy, but I thought of the law..." Michel discusses with his mother, who is rather bent towards a peaceful settlement. Her view is not important. The boy goes to the police station, from where one dispatches him to the hospital for examination. Report of red cheeks. "If you carry the matter further and you lose, that will cost your parents money ", the police officers tell him. Michel hesitates. He finds that the law is too difficult to apply. The mother thinks that the law relates especially to the future generations.

In Stockholm, I did not find other concrete cases of recourse to the new law against smacking which was voted last March by the Swedish Parliament. A crushing poll: only 6 votes against of the 350 possible. The only really negative reaction is that of Maranata, a negligible Protestant sect faithful to the biblical teachings, which threatens to take a complaint before the Court of the Human Rights in Strasbourg. However, a recent survey showed that 35 % of the parents of children under10 years do not approve of the text. Partisans of smacking? None whatsoever.

But like, except for a flick, they never strike their children, they deem that the "official" law is useless. The deputies are thus rather out of range compared to public opinion. "It is not serious, since "conservative" or Socialists, they are elected for that", said the writer Gunnar Myrdal, the old respected conscience of Scandinavian social democracy.

A law against smacking! When France learned of that, we slapped our legs while we grinded our teeth. The press, as expected, imagined decent fathers arrested, shackles on their hands, before the courts for a simple slap, whereas the Swedish law - people in France carefully avoided saying it - is meant to be very educational and does not envisage any sanction. How do you make future generations conform to the new model of how fathers should be, if the latter no longer have the right to roll up their sleeves? In short, the Swedes present, more than ever, the image of the scarecrow to the eyes in our Latin tradition. But before trembling, if it is necessary to tremble, one would like to know why.

"According to the law, the parents or the custodians, will exert on the child a monitoring appropriate to his age. Neither corporal punishment nor humiliating treatment should be inflicted on the child." That’s all, and it is great. The Swedish commentators, without questioning Marx, Freud or Jesus, declare that violence generates violence, and that, if struck by his parents, the child risks, in his future life, to resort to the same violence to achieve his goals.

Pious considerations

We, certainly, find that naive. More so, whether celebrity or ordinary citizen, all the Swedes that we've met recognise that. Mrs. Rigmor von Euler, a terribly superb old lady who was for seven years, the first ever ombudsman " of the children" in the world i.e. their protective official, is very decided. "Children are individuals, they belong only to themselves, and they must have their standards, their rules. To recognize these rules, is democracy. To be unaware of them, that's the law of the jungle." Let us note that Mrs. von Euler, the instigator of the "law against the smacking", is member of the Liberal Party, which is part of the “conservative" coalition that voted for the law.

For Sixten Petersson, conservative member of parliament or supposed to be "in a free and democratic country like ours, one argues with words, not with blows". Our friend the Maria Pia Boethius, the most influential of all Swedish journalists, points out that her employer does not beat her, not even when she aggravates him to anger. Then, what gives anyone the right to beat children? Bo Carlsson, 33 years, the new ombudsman, he too is persuaded, that those who are beaten, in their turn, will beat, and that it is not the good way to make free citizens. Kerstin Thorvall, writer and young grandmother, is persuaded that the criminals all were beaten when they were small. That is completely idiotic. But all Sweden thinks like that, hard like the iron from Kiruna.

One would be wrong to hang too much on these pious considerations about the good nature of man. The Swedes, " right-wing " or " left-wing", are all - at least from our point of view - some kind of species of pragmatic social democrats who act - and how! - step by step in stead of formulating theories. For ideological subtleties, it is better to bring your provisions of Paris. Alt the more, since the Swedes, who hardly have time to speak, do not think the least about it.

According to Dr. Gerard Mendel, inventor of the socio-psychoanalysis, author of "The Crisis of generations" and "To Decolonize Childhood" (Payot), the Swedes break down an open door by formulating the rights of the child at the expense of the authority of parents. A gate that we here stubbornly believe to be closed. Indeed, the identification of the child to his family is no longer automatic any more, like formerly. There is a hole, a vacuum. Smacking - or what takes its place - is thus not interiorized any more by the child. The child does not understand it any more, or almost not any more. In short, it is not good for anything, if not to oppress. Then, just as well get rid of it.

The Swedes have had time to think about it: the generation gap, they've known about it for a long time. It has been twenty years that one speaks about the " key-children" of Stockholm who return to their home all alone when dad and mom are still at the office or the factory. The crushing taxation obliges, more than ever, the couple to work. As the teacher Sven Hässle says, parents and children literally "do not see each other" anymore, not even a glimpse. Blind authority threatens to turn into tyranny, in a society which is so intoxicated by profitability.

Diminish the absolute power of the parents, very well. But Gerard Mendel wonders what the bold Swedes want to put in its place. How are they going to fill the void? For lack of a "society for children", the State, mo matter how benevolent it is, risks filling all the open space. And, with the best intentions in the world, it will be tempted to accelerate the movement more quickly to create starting from the very young children a free man, conscious, socialist, and so on and so forth.

Certainly, such intentions were never formulated in Stockholm. One does not even think of it. But this father dispossessed of his right to smack like Jupiter of his lightning, if you look closely, it is a whole program. Kerstin, the young grandmother who believes in the natural beauty of the man, thinks loudly: "Absolute obedience with the father, it is the practice of authority, of the God who punishes. To subject yourself to be loved. We do not want any more this Bergmanien world for our children."

In first line to Utopia

At Skå, a nice pedagogic village where one looks after families overcome by life, the very gentle Sven Hässle dreams with his eyes open: "the child must be itself for the betterment of our society will. Let no one say any more: "This is my child, the others do not concern me." The society must be responsible for all the children." It is a question, here and there, to seek, find means so that children can divorce their parents. That will not happen. But only the idea... Lenin never imagined a more fundamental revolution.

Of course, these Swedes are throwing the log a bit too far. One would say that they are taking pleasure in startling us. What? Through gentleness, democratically, they want to achieve what Hitler did with his SS youth, what the Russians and the Vietnamese did by the whip. Are they sending the children as the avant-garde of their Utopia? The Gulag with a human face? No. Wake up. The nightmare is everywhere, excepting Sweden.

The child is unbearable, this evening. He is bluffing, he is pushing way past the limits and doesn't know how to stop. "You want it? Slap, there you are! "The good spontaneous slap, the small slap of love is not a sin. Simply, since violence makes a bad marriage with peace, let us work to find something else. You must be able to be annoyed when it is necessary, yes, of course, if not, the child would be frozen in a well of abandonment. Protect. Help. Love. Remembering that you are father or mother does not confer infallibility. You say that aggressiveness exists of everyone? Maybe, let us arrange it as well as possible. The Swedes want also to arrange their material life, all evil is supposed vanish. They are demanding a six hour day for parents. In order for them to see and perceive their children better.

Heads, tails, heads. One ends up being giddy, in this country where everything is being changed. The puritan tradition of the North mixes with libertarian futurism, in a healthy or poisoned cocktail. By not to being able to punish, Mrs. Rigmor von Euler admits that, being a liberal, she ended up converting to the idea of protecting. And even of overprotecting. She wants all violence to be forbidden on the television and in books that can reach children.

Already, the "warrior" toys are prohibited. As in France, the film "Warriors" is censured. The social democrat Åke Gustafsson strikes John Travolta as being immoral. The ecologist Rasmussen finds that ice hockey promotes violence. They exclude rum in the baba recipes. Finally, Rigmor von Euler promises us that the time of the psychologists will succeed the time of the judges." The "psy"... I've got the police in mind. The notion of a wrong committed, buried, for the children and the adults. One no longer punishes the wrong-doer, you care him. The Dane Henrik Stangerup, wrote a terrible book on that subject; "The man who wanted to be guilty" (Sagittarius). "When you want to destroy the Devil, Stangerup says, it settles everywhere, it impregnates us, and, this time, nobody can do anything anymore." A certain Bert Persson, civil servant of the social services of Stockholm, has just proposed that one should "familiarise" the old and unproductive citizens with the idea of death. For the good of the society. Therefore, for their own good.

Let all ideas emerge, even the crazy ones, even the atrocious ones. Then, one chooses, one makes experiments prudently. Gunnar Myrdal, the wise old man, wonders in front of us with anguish: permission or repression? Personal freedom or compulsory flannel jacket? Nobody knows. It is necessary to test, to seek. Even if it is risky. Blind conservatism is even more dangerous. "Yes, we abandon authority to choose dialogue, says the socialist MP Matts Hellström. Serious problems will arise, they are already here. Drugs, alcohol. We know that. But nobody thinks of retrogressing. Even if that were possible."

The Norwegians, says one ironically in Stockholm, observe the Swedes from the other side of the border. They wait to see their intrepid neighbours fall on their faces, for then, they can take the same path without danger. We, French people, while the Swedes are clearing the jungle at their own risk and peril, we become indignant or we laugh "Oh! Look at the statistics: they are committing suicide!"

The Swedes commit suicide perhaps less than is said - because they are free and that life, it is difficult. Calves commit suicide very little. French television has just shown "the Flies", by Sartre. Oreste refuses wrong, sin, smacking. As a free man he may go and get drunk or take drugs. But, at the same time, Jupiter, the old tyrant with the whip, takes lead in his wing. It is perhaps that, more than all else, makes the Swedes tick.

Fessée: ils sont fous, ces Suédois

Sweden : data doses not support success claims

Smacking and the Law - a European Perspective

Back to Article Index