More than three-quarters of Taiwanese support amending laws to ban corporal punishment at home, the Humanistic Education Foundation told a news conference on Tuesday.
A survey conducted by the foundation showed that 39.2 percent of parents discipline their children using corporal punishment, 66.3 percent scold their children and 56.3 percent dispense other forms of punishments.
The survey also showed that 96.5 percent of parents teach their kids by reasoning or communicating with them.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
The majority of parents support banning corporal punishment at home, with 24.1 percent being highly supportive and 53.6 percent agreeing if there are supporting measures in place, the survey showed.
Most parents advocate a supportive system that can help improve their parenting skills, the survey showed.
The main obstacles faced by most parents include the long hours childcare requires and being torn between work and childcare, the foundation said.
This requires concrete measures from the government to help reduce the pressure on parents, it said, adding that other countries have enacted laws prohibiting corporal punishment at home to reduce incidents of child abuse, including Japan and South Korea, which passed such laws in 2020 and last year respectively.
Akito Kita, a professor at Waseda University and an expert in pedagogy and education law, told the news conference that Japan enacted a “child abuse prevention act” in 2019 and amended its “child welfare act” in 2020 prohibiting parents and legal guardians from inflicting corporal punishment in the name of discipline.
Japan is also drafting amendments to its civil law to abolish the disciplinary rights of parents and legal guardians, he added.
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