Family Integrity

Tag: Sweden

  • Anti-Smacking Conference At Venue Where Research Contradicts

    MEDIA RELEASE

    24 July 2008

    Anti-Smacking Conference At Venue Where Research Contradicts

    Family First NZ says that it is highly ironic that the anti-smacking lobby is gathering together at Otago University this coming weekend to try and sell the deeply flawed anti-smacking law.

    Otago University research showed that reasonable and appropriate smacking for the purpose of correction was not harmful and in some circumstances was actually beneficial in the development of a child.

    “The Dunedin multidisciplinary health and development study released in 2006 found that children who are smacked lightly with an open hand on the bottom, hand or leg do much the same in later life as those who are not smacked,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “They had similar, and sometimes even slightly better outcomes, in terms of aggression, substance abuse, adult convictions and school achievement than those who were not smacked at all.”

    “Just up the road at the Christchurch School of Medicine, Professor David Fergusson found there was no difference between not smacking and moderate physical punishment. The research said ‘It is misleading to imply that occasional or mild physical punishment has long term adverse consequences’.”

    “We hope that delegates at the conference will take time to examine the local research which contradicts the ideology behind the flawed anti-smacking law, will heed the warnings of the Swedish experience where the smacking ban has done more harm than good, and will respect and heed the call of over 80% of NZ’ers to change the law,” says Mr McCoskrie.

    ENDS

    For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:

    Bob McCoskrie – National Director

    Mob. 027 55 555 42

  • Muriel Newman: Rich Country – Poor Families

    http://www.nzcpr.com/weekly25.htm

    1 April 06
    Rich Country – Poor Families

    In a sense, New Zealand is one of the richest countries on earth. We have a great climate, beautiful countryside, and a more leisurely pace of life. Our people are friendly, hard working and caring. We are close to each other in a way that comes from being a small country remote from the rest of the world.

    On top of that, we have a wealth of natural resources, we are great innovators and entrepreneurs, and we have established international recognition for our creativity and achievement in a multitude of fields of endeavour.

    So why is it that so many New Zealanders have a deep-seated sense of foreboding about the future? Sure, it could be the negative growth (no economic growth recorded in the second half of last year) or the rapidly falling dollar (the Minister of Finance sent officials to Japan last year to talk the dollar down). Maybe it’s the burgeoning balance of payments deficit (foreign debt grows as the dollar falls), or the rising price of petrol (adding in today’s 1c petrol tax increase, 91 octane is expected to rise to $1.62 a litre). But I suspect that the issues that are driving that sense of gloom are much more personal.

    At the heart of the problem appears to be a growing sense of despair about the state of the New Zealand family. As a country with a strong tradition of two-parent married families, many New Zealanders feel that Labour’s interference in family matters has been detrimental. In particular, law changes introduced as part of their social engineering agenda are manifesting themselves in negative ways.

    There is a new reticence for young people to commit themselves to marriage – why bother, when de-facto relationships have the same legal privilege as marriage? Yet common sense tells us that marriage signals a commitment for life, giving young women, in particular, the promise of stability and security they need in order to begin thinking about starting a family.

    There is also a new tendency for relationships to break up just before the three-year joint property claim thresh-hold is reached. Couples who are not quite sure whether things will work out between them, are not prepared to take the risk of staying together if it means signing over half of their assets.

    With the Domestic Purposes Benefit already incentivising the massive breakdown of the family, these more recent changes are making the situation worse by giving rise to more unstable, transient relationships. It is therefore little wonder we are seeing an escalation in child abuse and domestic violence as well as the fall-out from the breakdown of stable families – marginalized fathers, alienated children, and excluded grandparents.

    Just this week, New Zealand’s top Family Court judge said that violence in the home is blighting the country’s image as a good place to raise children. Yet I do not hear the Judge – or any of the other professionals who work in this field – calling for a change to the policies that are driving this social collapse.

    And, with Labour’s new family welfare package coming into effect today, resulting in 350,000 families receiving income support, we urgently need to review the wisdom of massive government interference in the family, before more lives are damaged or lost.

    A new publication released by the British think tank Civitas this week, examines the wisdom of state interference in the family from an international perspective. In her book Family Policy, Family Changes, Patricia Morgan compares the state of the family in Sweden, Italy and Britain, and concludes that families thrive in countries where there is less government interference.

    In Britain, where an anti-marriage agenda is being strongly promoted by the public service, universities and government funded social agencies, family problems are rife, with Britain topping the league tables in several of the most worrying indicators of breakdown, including divorce and teenage pregnancy. In Sweden, where a comprehensive social engineering programme has transferred many family responsibilities to the state – to a degree unseen outside of the Soviet bloc – thereare even higher rates of out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation than Britain.

    Italy, however, has effectively had no government intervention into the family, and is still the home of the traditional family unit. Divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, including teenage pregnancies, are extremely low. Cohabitation is so rare as to be difficult to measure. Young people live with their parents until they get married, and, for most women, marriage will represent their first living-together relationship.

    While government interference in the family is a cause of major concern, there are many other matters that are driving that feeling of despondency felt by many New Zealanders. In particular, there is an overbearing sense that things could be so much better, especially in those important areas that the government is responsible for.

    With 12,000 hospital beds and 12,000 hospital managers and administrators is the growth in New Zealand’s hospital waiting lists being caused by too much bureaucracy? Are we confident that our welfare system is working properly when we all know fit and healthy young men and women who are languishing on benefits? Would primary and secondary school education improve if vouchers were introduced in order to give parents the same choice that they currently have at pre-school and tertiary level?

    And why don’t we take a common sense approach to the small business sector – the engine room of our economy – by freeing them up from the mountains of unnecessary cost and red tape that inhibits their growth and productivity? Why not lower taxes across the board not only to boost the economy and create a competitive advantage for Kiwi businesses, but also to establish New Zealand as an attractive destination for international business?

    There is so much that can be done to solve those problems that are holding us back – as a nation that responds quickly to positive incentives, with good leadership and sensible ideas, we could really fly!

    The NZCPD guest comment this week comes from Sir Roger Douglas who outlined to the ACT Party conference last week, the importance of creating a vision for a better New Zealand (View >>>).

    Printer friendly version (PDF) View >>>

    This weeks poll. The poll this week asks do you think that the family related policies that Labour has introduced are good for the country? To take part in our online poll >>>

  • Comments from Ruby Harrold-Claesson on Deborah Coddington: Violence so ingrained

    A lot of what Deborah Coddington has written in her article (see below) is completely irrelevant. Deborah Coddington, Sue Bradford and the other ideologically, politically correct advocates brains are so twisted that they can’t see the difference between violence and discipline. They portray good as evil, but they are the ones spreading evil in our world. They refuse to learn from what is happening in Sweden – the pioneer in “soft child upbringing”. Thomas Michelsen,  would have been alive today – but for the anti-smacking law.

    Thomas Michelsen, 15, was clubbed to death by two Hungarian immigrant brothers in a school yard in Bjuv (Skåne) on Sunday November 20, 1994. “I will never forget the ‘kick’” one of the brothers said during the police investigation. After they had killed Thomas, the brothers went and ate at a pizzeria. Cf Youngsters tortured 55-year-old to death. They filmed when disabled man begged for his life. The youngsters went home and ate in between the battering sessions.

    The shooting in Rödeby and the Riccardo Campogiani killing – both on October 6, 2007, and most of the other incidents of youth violence would not have taken place – but for the anti-smacking law.

    Here’s a refreshing ‘mea culpa’ from one of the people, if not the person, who way back originally inspired what has become ‘Child protection’ hysteria in the UK!:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1033483/I-launched-Childline-protect-vulnerable–unleashed-politically-correct-monster.html

    ‘I launched Childline to protect the most vulnerable – but unleashed a politically correct monster’

    By Esther Rantzen

    9th July 2008

    By the way, have you seen the following articles (both linked to the NCHR’s web site)?

    Child protection damages public health
    Press Release 21st May 2008

    Child protection
    By Jean Robinson

    Keep up your good work.

    All the best
    Ruby


    Deborah Coddington: Violence so ingrained

    – that’s the real tragedy

    5:00AM Sunday July 13, 2008
    By     Deborah Coddington

    Why are we aghast at the revelation Tony Veitch beat his partner so badly she reportedly ended up in a wheelchair? This is New Zealand, remember, violence is our answer to everything. Every other morning we wake to news that another child is “fighting for its life” in Starship Hospital and “police are investigating” suspicious injuries. Or worse, another child has died at the hands of his or her “caregivers” (a misnomer, if ever there was one).

    Physical and sexual abuse of children is so rife we’ve given up trying to do anything about it.

    The Children’s Commissioner, Cindy Kiro, a genuinely well-intentioned woman, spends more time as commissioner of studies and reports than actively campaigning against cruelty to children.

    Why not a children’s commissioner visiting every school in the country, giving every child her phone number, telling them to call her if someone so much as threatens to lay a hand on them in anger or lust?

    Dream on, Coddington. This is a country where the only petition in recent years to gain enough signatures to repeal a law was one which advocated the smacking of children (to Kiro’s credit, she spoke out against this campaign to bring back Section 59 of the Crimes Act).

    We water down the horror of violence within families by calling it “domestic violence”, much like we make pussy cats more acceptable than their spitting, clawing, yowling feral cousins, by defining our pets as domesticated.

    Maybe we’re shocked Veitch paid hush money to his former partner – $100,000 we’re told – to “compensate” for her trauma and loss of income. He’s not the first wealthy abuser to pay to keep the public away from his shame, but truth has a nasty habit of coming out.

    Sadly, violence is everywhere in this Godless country – the rich and famous are not exempt. Every single night children are cowering in their bedrooms, hiding under the blankets trying to block out the noise of Mum and Dad (if he’s their real dad) yelling at each other, chasing each other around the house, pushing, belting and kicking each other.

    These kids don’t get paid hush money, but nonetheless they go to school the next day and pretend nothing happened. They kid themselves their home life is as happy as today’s television equivalent of my era’s Brady Bunch.

    Those kids grow up, become criminals, and Sensible Sentencing advocates more violence, demanding incarceration with hard labour. Yeah, like that will make a difference to someone who’s never heard a kind word of praise. As Celia Lashlie wrote in her book Journey to Prison, we imprison criminals as punishment, not for punishment.

    What happened after the violent attacks against Asian people in South Auckland? Calls for more violence by some 10,000 members of the Asian community, angry because politicians aren’t lining up anyone who looks like a thug and locking them up if they’re even thinking about being naughty. And because he viewed the New Zealand police force as so ineffectual, Peter Low, leader of this anti-crime organisation, threatened to bring in the Triads, advising Asian people to defend themselves with violence.

    Er, excuse me, but aren’t most violent crimes fuelled by methamphetamine addiction, and isn’t 90 per cent of that drug’s importation carried out by Asian gangs?

    Low was quickly ridiculed, but unionist Beven Hanlon wasn’t when he called for prison guards to be armed, preferably with taser guns, after an inmate badly injured a guard with a yard broom.

    In sport, violence is called biffo; if you’re an All Black you get a growling. In New Zealand, traffic violence is called “I own a bigger car so you can’t change lanes”. What did Sir Edmund Hillary say when he reached the top of Everest? “We knocked the bugger off.”

    Last week I was appearing on Willie Jackson’s Eye to Eye programme and another guest, whom I’d never met, greeted me with, “My brother hates you”.

    Veitch isn’t the first high-profile New Zealander to beat up his partner, and he won’t be the last. If anything good comes of this tragedy, it’s that New Zealanders face up to the intrinsic violence in our national culture. Goodness me, a pig just flew past my window.

    * deb.coddington@xtra.co.nz

  • Why should we discriminate against children?

    Sten Danielson: “The hostility – and anxiety – is reminiscent of racism”

    Aftonbladet, May 28, 2008.

    http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article2553761.ab

    It is becoming increasingly common with children not being allowed on: flights, hotels, restaurants. But anyone who becomes uncomfortable by the proximity of a small child is in need of psychiatric care regardless of the reason for their phobia, not respect for their abnormalities.

    No, follow up the smacking ban with a legal prohibition against a child-ban, writes Sten Danielson.

    Recently, we have been “bequeathed” with a new phenomenon – no children on air travel, in hotels and business places where it is not in keeping with the natural order and security reasons, mental health care views or (rightly or wrongly) feared future destruction of character of the young to reasonably justify the prohibitions. The basis for these [prohibitions] has simply been some adults’ reluctance to have children in their vicinity.

    The discriminatory situation has the particularity of being completely irrational and thus the model for a violation of the victim’s human dignity. If I order food and drinks at a restaurant or a cafe and I do not infringe any code of conduct, if I go into a department store to buy a suit without being a disturbance in any way, if I order a trip to Thailand or the Caribbean and a hotel room to go with it and all the time I behave soberly and orderly and do not molest any travelling companion, it is of course completely irrelevant what skin- and hair colour I have, what religion I adhere to or if I do not have any at all, if I am a Moderate or Social Democrat, an Ecologist or leftist. If I am refused access with any such extraneous motives, I then have an objective basis to consider myself discriminated against.

    And my being a child it naturally just as unimportant as if the colour of my skin were white or black, etc. Anyone who feels uncomfortable in the proximity of a small child is in need of psychiatric care regardless of the reason for their phobia, not respect for their abnormalities, in the same way as if their phobia was about skin-colour, crooked nose or a name that suggests Arab or Muslim descent.

    I am not a “child romantic” and among the most idiotic things I heard in my long life on earth (75 years) is the cliché a psychologist blurted out in the 50’s that “there are no nasty children.” Children can be terribly nasty. How they have become such is a different matter. Often the children have probably taken over the wickedness of the adults (bad) examples. Children can also be wonderful, empathetic and loving. Around the same time as Engla was murdered two small siblings were murdered in Arboga. In a public letter bordering on what was unbearably gripping, the father of the victims wrote among other things, that the children always tried to help and support each other; when one was sad the other would give consolation. If we adults treat our youngsters from the start, with justice and respect and love they usually tend to go on to live with these characteristics as guiding principles.

    But if those around us treat our young ones with pathological coldness and evil (I will not hesitate before that judgement!) that tends to be associated with irrational discrimination, we can instead get a terrible terrorist and suicide bomber. Animosity towards children is animosity towards people, just as much as for example, racism and xenophobia.

    Children can be extremely difficult, everyone who comes into contact with them knows that. But most often this small vital passionate brat is at the same time double fun and triple wonderful! Again and again, we see in our youngsters this spontaneous love and joy and tenderness towards small and big, and all living creatures, which in spite of everything makes human life worth living. The adult who does not understand this is sick in the soul and in need of treatment.

    I’m sure you know the story of the boy who, after a raging storm went along the seashore and threw stranded shellfish back into the sea. When he was throwing back one of them a wise-ass adult said:

    “What does it matter that you throw in a few shellfish and save their lives? The storm has displaced thousands of them! ”

    “But for this one, it matters a lot,” the boy replied.

    Jesus said that if we do not become like children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. He understood.

    So let us now without further delay follow up the smacking ban with a legal prohibition against a child-ban in virtually all communication, places of business, hotels and guesthouses, stores and events in public places! And there should be both proper fines and prison sentences for those who break that law!

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    Reply 1 – Disruptive children [are]

    the parents’ responsibility

    By Caesar von Walzel, former parent of small children,

    age 64 yrs, healthy! Stockholm

    http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article2599677.ab

    Aftonbladet, 2008-06-03

    The former Region assessor’s article about a child-ban is perceived by me as depressing reading for two reasons.
    1) The comparison of a vast number of racist examples that claims that someone might have the same aversion to children in general. A total miss of the point! It is DISRUPTIVE children who are disruptive, just like all other ill-mannered, loud-mouthed or drunken elements in a public place. (They are, of course, nor welcome – or?) The paying guests at a restaurant, on an airplane, the beach – and so on have the same right to the atmosphere that they are visiting and also the right to expect it. For example, calm when eating, repose or relaxation that a well-decorated restaurant or other place chosen for the purpose may offer, instead of being forced into a “kindergarten-atmosphere”!

    Of course, it is the parents’ responsibility to ensure that their children do not destroy for others.

    In the editorial of SvD one could read about disturbing things in a swimming center, in which it is clearly stated that the parents of young children are the most aggressive ones. I share that view.

    The parents of young children have the same rights and obligations as other persons. I was able to extend / change the “prohibition” to the prohibition of the incompetent selfish parents who are accompanied by disruptive and unmanageable children. Other families with children are of course welcome.

    2) The good assessor seems to represent the kind of past “sovereignty” who believes that people who do not share his view, have phobias and need psychiatric care. I can inform him that fortunately, we have left this type of one-party-regime and authoritarianism behind us in our Nordic democracy. With this kind of argument you lose the most important thing in a debate piece, namely the facts!

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    Children ARE disruptive!

    http://meritwager.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/svenska-barn-ar-storande/

    (swedish children are disruptive)

    “It is becoming increasingly common with children not being allowed on: flights, hotels, restaurants. But anyone who becomes uncomfortable by the proximity of a small child is in need of psychiatric care regardless of the reason for their phobia, not respect for their abnormalities.

    No, follow up the smacking ban with a legal prohibition against a child-ban, writes Sten Danielson.”

    That is what is written in the beginning of an article in Aftonbladet. What nonsense! Just because you do not want screaming, annoying and ill-bred kids around you, doesn’t mean that you are in need of psychiatric treatment! On the contrary: it is healthy to react against the screaming, fussy and wild kids everywhere, for example, in cafes, patisseries and restaurants as well as in museums and in churches, etc. It has nothing to do with the need for psychiatric treatment when we want to sit in peace and quiet and drink a cup of coffee or attend a church service or other celebration at church without kids, who are carrying on.

    It is of course the parents who are destroying their children and thus destroying for their children, it is the parents who are the most aggravating. Too many of them seem not to have a clue about how to bring up their children and are unable to keep track of them and teach them into show consideration for other people.

    The article in Aftonbladet is among the most diffuse and stupid, I have read in a long time. One wanting not to have children around when you want to relax or enjoy a culinary or cultural experience has nothing at all to do with “discrimination”, which the author is trying to make it seem to be. And if it really were a question of discrimination, it is rather the parents with hyperactive children who are crying and fussing who discriminate against others who have not chosen to have all the noise around them in different situations.
    And – as always – there are several sides of the issue. All children are not disruptive, all parents are not ignorant and don’t-give-a-damn. Even though many are.

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    Sweden has created great problems for itself by removing parental authority. Linda Skugge said it in 2003 “We are bringing up a generation of monsters“, Roger Lord said it in 2005 “The children are embarrassing Sweden“, in October after the fatal shooting of a teenager in Rödeby, many people said “Shoot another one“ and now we have a chorus criticising this piece.