Joan Bakewell: Hitting children simply tells them that might is right

The only time Alan Johnston was beaten and hit about the head was in the car as his captors were driving him to the rendezvous where they would hand him over. How odd is that? What was the impulse that made them lash out? What sudden fury of revenge, regret and frustration led them to lose control? That's the problem with physical violence: it comes from roots deep in the human psyche, aggravated by mass behaviour that sways us to follow the crowd rather than our own better judgement.

We deplore violence in so many ways. Of course we do. We particularly hate individuals who attack and abuse children. Paedophiles are universally regarded as the lowest of the low and no mercy is shown by neighbours and former friends when their crimes come to light. Indeed, the very notion that one of them might be rehabilitated at an address nearby prompts parents into vigorous campaigns denouncing and hounding the villains.

How odd it is then, that as the law of the land now stands, children are less protected from assault than adults. Despite the requirements of the United Nations and Council of Europe human rights agreements, the Children Act passed by parliament in 2004 and coming into force in January 2005 still allows so-called "reasonable punishment" to be administered by parents and others. Such punishment is usually described as smacking, or slapping ... words sounding harmless enough but in reality disguising a tendency to brutality that can do much to damage those to whom it is administered, and the relationship between both the people involved. Some families simply never recover.

Last month the government announced that it is to review the operation of "reasonable punishment" as it had promised when the law was enacted. You are now invited to join the consultation and send your thoughts and your evidence to the Department of Education. Any review will not immediately change the law, but could well result in changes to practice. So here's mine.

First witnesses: Keke and Beso Djugashvili, parents of a baby boy they called Sosa. Father was a drunk and wastrel who beat young Sosa and his mother whenever he felt like it. Mother, who adored her son, could be quickly roused too, and also let her son feel the force of her hand. Sosa grew to power in the street gangs of his community where his intelligence and brutality quickly made him the dominant male of the group. Cruelty to others meant nothing to him and such ruthlessness persisted through a political career that took him to the top.

We know all this because of the recently published book Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore, an enthralling piece of research that lays bare the source of the greatest violence of the last century. The child is indeed the father of the man.

Second witnesses: Mr and Mrs Hitler. Young Adolf was a bed-wetter, and though his mother tried to shield the fact from his father, once the assertive Alois found out, he took his leather belt to the growing child. Alois disapproved of his son's aspirations to be an artist, died when the boy was in his early teens, and left him, a disturbed psychotic, to make his own way in the world. Which he duly did.

I am not fool enough to suppose that a modest slap or occasional smack will produce children as disturbed as Hitler or Stalin. Clearly many influences converge to produce great monsters. But at some level we are on a continuum of behaviour with gentle correction at one end and gross inhumanity at another. In between come all degrees of chastisement, many of which damage the ability to develop genuinely deep and loving personalities. It is well known that abusive adults have usually been abused when they were children. And there are fears that the child soldiers of Africa will be hard to rehabilitate.

Why do we persist in keeping remnants of what is now seen as out-of-date child-rearing on our statute books? I suspect the reason lies in the incontrovertibly difficult business of bringing up children with unstinting love and tolerance. Parents want the back-up of last resort. Children live in a culture of individualism that regards getting your own way as some sort of triumph, scoring over others an even greater display of character, and taking revenge for any kind of disrespect a matter of honour. It must be tough sorting out what values count and holding on to them in the face of peer pressure and society's indifference.

The government's proposed review of "reasonable punishment" should set an example. Hitting children in order to get them to behave merely tells them that might is right, the bigger bully will prevail. It is odd that we are having such a sustained campaign against bullying while still authorising the sort of behaviour that bullies themselves adopt to cow their victims.

The situation in Britain is out of kilter with the European Social Charter, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the 2006 report of the United Nations Secretary-General's Study on Violence against Children, which calls on all countries to prohibit all physical punishment by 2009.

We should not heed any argument that seeks to exclude Britain from all these recommendations. Any exemption that bends to claims of national sovereignty will do us no credit at all. It is time we pledged to bring up our children to be strong, loving and respectful. You can't do that if you beat them.

joan.bakewell@virgin.net