Parliament May Spare the Rod : Discipline: Although studies show that 90% of British parents spank their children, a growing number believe it should be outlawed.

A boy of about 6 gouges a sapling in Hyde Park, stripping away its bark. Up steps his father. Whack! Right on the bottom.

There are tears, and Daddy says to a woman who observed the scene, “That’s what I call child abuse,” pointing to the tree his child had been abusing.

Should the man be arrested? Some would say yes, seeing the smack on the bottom of an errant child as the prelude to more serious abuse.

Those of this persuasion have won some sympathy with the Scottish Law Commission, a group of jurists whose job it is to propose new laws in Scotland, to update existing ones or to expunge irrelevant ones. The commission has asked the House of Commons to curb the rights of Scotland’s parents to use corporal punishment on their children.

The commission did not urge the total criminalization of parental spanking as some people wanted--and as had been expected. Rather it asked Parliament to “clarify and limit” the degree of corporal punishment parents could use. Using belts, for instance, should be outlawed, the commission said.

Spanking by teachers, policemen or any non-relative involved in child care is already a criminal offense in the United Kingdom.

There are law commissions in England, Scotland and Wales. The Scottish commission is very prestigious, and what it proposes often goes into English law.

Why is such a law thought necessary?

According to Penelope Leach, “spanking is just too much of a national habit.” She is the parent education coordinator of a charity organization called EPOCH, for End Physical Punishment of Children.

Spanking, she says, “is something taken for granted in this country. It is the last hangover of the idea that this is a legitimate means of exercising authority.”

And there is evidence that it is widespread. A study of 700 families carried out at the University of Nottingham in 1985, then followed up in 1990, indicated that 90% of British parents spank their children. “This has been confirmed by later polls,” said Leach.

Leach believes a punitive law would encourage a change in attitude toward children and make parents aware that “we have a responsibility to children rather than ownership of them.”

“They are not dogs,” she said, “though British people hit their dogs less than their children.”

Leach is convinced that there is a connection between the spanking of children and eventual child abuse. “The overwhelming number of studies show it,” she says.

Not everybody agrees, although she does seem to be swimming with the tide. Several European countries have made parental spanking a crime. Sweden was the first, in 1979. Denmark, Finland, Austria and Norway followed. Germany is considering it.

Despite the seriousness with which recommendations by the Scottish Law Commission are received, it is not likely England will go along this time. The Conservative Government does not readily pass laws that intrude into the family sphere, although certainly wife beating and child abuse are crimes. Spanking is just not everywhere regarded with the same degree of horror.