Home ties are never affairs of state

There is now a bill pending in the Philippine House of Representatives that will make it illegal for anyone to inflict corporal punishment on children or subject them to any form of humiliation or degradation.

Under the bill filed by Tarlac Rep. Monica Prieto Teodoro, anybody caught slapping, kicking, choking, pinching, whipping or ridiculing a child will have to spend some time in jail upon conviction.

As a parent, I do not think it is right for parents, or anyone else for that matter, to inflict physical or emotional harm on children, be it their own or somebody else’s. But I do not think it is right either to make parental supervision a matter of legislation.

There are already a number of laws and regulations that adequately protect children, laws that can be quickly resorted and applied whenever any of the above-mentioned acts are committed, without having to enact more of the same.

To enact more laws on the same subject is bound to generate negative impact on a lot of areas. As a matter of perception, for instance, it will give the impression that Filipinos are so brutal toward children that it has to require a shipload of laws to protect our kids.

Even in the minds of the children themselves, they will be growing up with the wrong perception that their parents must have been such ogres as to force the state to pass a number of laws just to protect them.

There is also the matter of adverse effects on the parents themselves, who will feel the state is encroaching so much on their own right to supervise their own children, especially on matters pertaining to discipline.

Besides, is the state prepared to assume the role of parents in the event parents are jailed for violating the law on children’s rights? This question is not just an offshoot of the issue but a major concern that should be addressed before we make the folly of passing the law.

A parent who, in one single instance in his life loses his cool and managed to raise his hand against his child, will still and always be in a better capacity to raise that child than the state, with the best intentions, ever can.

Maybe this is no longer the time for that admonition — “spare the rod and spoil the child.” But it is still the parent that knows what is best for his or her child, not the state. Try interfering with that responsibility and the state will have real trouble in its hands.

Parents and their children have a certain depth in their relationship that the state can never hope to fathom. There is a certain kind of bonding between parent and child that not even moments of great stress can replace. Certainly the state cannot.

Parents and children know and fully understand this relationship, this bonding. Unless there is clear abuse being perpetrated by parents on children, the state should not be required to step into the sacred ties that bind parents and children.

The state must understand that these ties are so complete that both parties have come to fully acknowledge each of their responsibilities toward the other. This acknowledgement is the basis for all discipline. They should never be an occasion for state intervention.

The state has no business intruding into homes unless such intrusion is mandated by something bordering on the criminal. Normal stresses that are common and in fact healthy for all relationships should be ignored by the state, which is never an authority on personal ties.