Friday’s post prompted Bishop Hill and readers to deconstruct some of my assumptions about libertarianism and parenting in a little more detail.  

Bishop’s main point was that my objection to corporal punishment was a mistake. He encouraged me to think a little harder about the nature of coercion and parenting; the comments thread furthered this thinking and I have arrived at the following conclusions, which are subject to revision, as always!

The non-negotiable rules in our house are (I believe) moral in basis. We all follow them and they can broadly (with some caveats) be summed up as follows:

• We do not do illegal things
• we do not harm other people, and
• we do not harm ourselves

These are the only rules we have. If there was reason to believe that my child (for whom I am legally responsible) was going to break those rules, or indeed had broken them, then I would use coercion if necessary to stop them, or prevent the situation from escalating. (update: it's worth clarifying here that I believe this is far less likely to ever happen if children have autonomy in matters of personal preference, as I go on to explain.)

As far as I can fathom, morals exist to prevent individuals causing harm to each other. If my child was an adult, I wouldn’t demand that she follow the “we do not harm ourselves” rule; neither would I necessarily expect her to follow the “we do not do illegal things” rule, especially when there is an abundance of legislation with which I am personally at odds. But, she is a legally dependent child and I am a legally responsible adult, who is leading by example. So we all follow our rules.

If we do not do illegal things, we do not harm other people, and we do not harm ourselves, then all decisions pertaining to anything else: bedtime, food, alcohol, smoking, sex, education, sharing – relate to personal preference, not morality. What is right for me (three regular meals a day at set times) is not necessarily right for my child. Moreover, if I don’t want to do something (such as be forced to share) why should she be made to? I am certain that, for her to best master self control, personal responsibility and independence, I cannot teach her those things. She has to learn them for herself.  Contributory factors in this learning are:

• Personal experience: when I do x, this is what happens or how I feel;
• Observation: when other people do x, this is what happens or how they appear to feel;
  
• Social implications: if I do x, then other people do y;
  
• Our relationship: if my parent is reasoned, respectful and consistent, I am more likely to listen to and trust in his or her experience.
  

However: many people frequently confuse issues of morality with issues of preference. So my lack of rules and unwillingness to resort to coercion in relation to personal preference becomes confused with lax parenting or moral subjectivism; I am accused of an “anything goes”, “nothing is more right than anything else and we will respect everything”, wishy washy approach to parenting that bothers just me as much as authoritarianism. I think we’re pretty rigorous when it comes to morality, but following on from that we are committed to ensuring that individual freedom is upheld, along with the responsibilities that go with it.

Just because my child has never had an enforced bedtime, and just because she is allowed to eat chocolate when she chooses, this does not make our family morally deficient. We have a child who happily goes to bed when she is tired, and eats chocolate (along with everything else) in moderation. If personal preferences did create tension within the family, I would prefer to resolve the situation by reaching a mutually agreeable solution, rather than through coercion, which just isn’t conducive to critical thinking and problem solving. It’s not a sensible long term strategy to best help my child to reach independence.

But back to coercion – I have said that I would use coercion to prevent my child from doing something illegal, causing harm to others, or causing harm to herself. There are caveats: if she was doing something illegal, it wasn’t harming anyone else, we were both happy for her to do that thing, and she definitely wasn’t going to get caught, then I think it would be okay. If she is causing harm to others, my threshold of tolerance is pretty low. If she is causing harm to herself, my threshold is much higher. She wants to touch something hot? Okay. She wants to walk on a slippery surface? Okay. She wants to walk on water before she can swim? Not okay.

Bishop Hill uses the example of physical coercion to prevent harm, and whilst I would prefer not to resort to it wherever possible, I would not hesitate to use it if prevented greater harm. If a smack was the best way of preventing my child from punching someone or running into a canal, then I would smack her. But as with a police officer arresting someone in the real world, I can’t see that this would often be the case. It is far more likely that simply grabbing hold of her and restraining her would be far more effective.

But where I reach my sticking point is corporal punishment. Bishop uses this example:

"So when it comes to child rearing, I would have thought that "physical chastisement" is quite appropriate in certain circumstances. For example, when little Jonny bashes little Jane, and particularly if the social niceties of bashing have already been explained to little him, it would convey an important lesson about the real world. After all if we accept that children are intelligent human beings (which we do) then surely we have to accept that they have to take responsibility for their actions?"

I think I have two main arguments here: firstly, if you hit someone they are likely to retaliate in kind – Jane hitting Johnny back is far more analogous with the real world. Secondly, hitting someone is likely to get you arrested and charged. If you are found guilty of an offence, you receive a fine, a suspended sentence, or a custodial sentence. In this country at least, you are not beaten or worse for your actions. So I cannot therefore see the logic in using physical chastisement as punishment for a child as a “real world” lesson - surely confiscation, restricted privileges or grounding is more representative of what really happens?

I have to be honest here: in an ideal world, I would prefer to see far fewer laws and more proportionate punishments for those who transgress them. Some people are shocked by the implications of this position, but to me the logic appeals. It is no coincidence that in Singapore, for example, where corporal and capital punishment is commonplace, the crime rates are so low. People are forced to more stringently consider their actions which have the potential to harm others. But this is such a cultural shift from where we are here and are now I am struggling to picture the implications for my parenting: I assume I would be more likely to threaten or resort to more severe (corporal?) punishment to enforce moral rules where necessary. If we choose to treat children as real people, it also means that we have recognise “childhood” as the social construct it really is, rather than an immutable age of innocence that must be protected whatever the cost to others.

So, the woman with the hairbrush – what about her? Well, we are where we are. If I hit an adult with an object, I would expect that either they would hit me back, or that they would take the matter to the authorities. So the woman should not be surprised if her son resorts to hitting her, or other people, in order to get them to do what he wants, whether they like it or not. And she should not really be surprised that the matter was investigated further by officials. Children do not sit outside of the law that protects other human beings from harm, and rightly so.

But the law is an ass: Jailing a parent for failing to make their child go to school is a nonsense that resolves nothing and creates further problems; removing this child from his otherwise loving home and placing him into our abysmally deficient “care” system to better protect him is no less idiotic. The legal concepts of proportionality, reasonableness and practicability exist for good reason. They relate to the behaviour of human beings in human situations and they cannot be neatly fitted into tick boxes and catch-all clauses, no matter how much bureaucrats would prefer it to be otherwise. All people - children and adults - are unique and they are fallible: trying to impose a top-down, one-size-fits all solution, or legislating for every possible occasion, just simply isn’t possible.