Legislators Mull Bill to Ban Physical Punishment
by Rod Hughes
Costa Ricans are well known for their adoration of children. But isn’t a law prohibiting parents to use any kind of physical punishment going too far?
The bill is out of committee with multi-partisan support. The current Family Code specifies that parents have “the rights and…duties to educate, care for, watch over and, in moderate ways, correct their children.”
But the proposed law would go much further, adding “excluding ANY form of physical punishment or mistreatment, as well as aggression or dengrating physical or emotional treatment.”
Physical punishment has long been banned in schools but the home has been left to the parents.
Unity Party congressman Jorge Eduardo Sánchez, for one, is troubled by the bill, fearing that parents will lose authority over their own children. “We could be sending a wrong signal here,” he warned, in robbing parents of their right to correct kids with punishment.
Three persons selected by the morning paper La Nación in a mini-poll did not think much of the bill, although they acknowledged that abuse is not the answer in guiding a child.