A senate bill seeking to ban physical punishment for children was recently filed by Senator Leila de Lima.
There is no specific law that prohibits corporal punishment against children
Senate Bill No. 1348, or “The Anti-Corporal Punishment Act of 2017” seeks to protect children from corporal punishment such as “spanking, shaking, or paddling” and other forms of “humiliating and degrading treatment.”
De Lima shares, “In the Philippines, there is no specific law that prohibits the use of corporal punishment or physical violence against children.”
“It is imperative to underscore that the protection of children against acts that harm their physical and psychological integrity is a treaty commitment of the Philippines”
She adds that physical punishment doesn’t instill discipline in children, and may actually cause them to continue the cycle of abuse once they grow up and have children of their own.
If the bill pushes through, it will be the first of it’s kind in Southeast Asia.
Is corporal punishment bad?
Here in the Philippines, as with most Asian countries, opinion is still divided on whether or not corporal punishment can be considered as abuse, or just a normal part of discipline.
While research has shown that corporal punishment does very little when it comes to a child’s discipline, there are still a lot of parents who say that corporal punishment works, especially since that’s also what their parents did when they were growing up.
In the Philippines particularly, physical punishment is commonly seen as not just the preferred method of discipline, but also the parent’s responsibility when it comes to rearing a child. It’s already ingrained in our tradition, and almost all Filipino kids have experienced corporal punishment in various forms.
Regardless of your stance on corporal punishment, parents can all agree that abusive behavior, such as beating your child, or deliberately hurting them just so you can hurt them is not right, and should never be tolerated in any way, shape, or form.
Source: gmanetwork.com, business.inquirer.net
READ: Pre-school teacher suspended for “humiliating punishment”
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