The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a proposed amendment to the Civil Code that would prohibit parents from harming the mental and physical health of their children when disciplining them.
Article 1085 of the Civil Code stipulates that parents may, within the limit of necessity, punish their children. The article is widely perceived as a legal basis that establishes the right of parents to punish their children.
The amendment proposed by the Ministry of Justice would delete the statement and change it to: “Parents should protect and raise underage children by considering their age and mental development and respecting their character. They must not engage in violent behaviors that harm mental and physical health.”
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The proposed changes face further deliberation in the legislature.
The ministry said it consulted Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Control Yuan’s National Human Rights Commission, adding that the wording of the proposed amendment is in line with similar statutes that Japan and South Korea passed in the past few years.
The purpose of the proposed change is to clarify the principle that parents should follow when they exercise their right to discipline their children, the ministry said, adding that supporting measures would be stipulated in the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act (兒童及少年福利與權益保障法).
Minister Without Portfolio Lin Min-hsin (林明昕) said that courts in multiple cases have established that parents must not harm their children’s mental and physical health when disciplining them, a “red line” that parents must not cross.
The judicial system and parental education policies would not change significantly because of the proposed amendment, Lin said.
The proposal is not intended to prohibit parental discipline of their children, Department of Protective Services Deputy Director Kuo Tsai-jung (郭彩榕) said.
“We hope that they would adopt a more positive approach,” Kuo said.
The Ministry of Education said that parents can seek advice at family education centers across the country.
They can also consult the ministry’s family education Web site at https://familyedu.moe.gov.tw or call the family education hotline on (02) 412-8185, the education ministry added.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS