UK Childrens' Commissioners and smacking

The four UK Childrens' Commissioners have apparently written to the Education Secretary demanding that the government outlaw smacking children.

Apart from being futile, creating a ridiculously unenforceable law and clogging up Westminster with additional useless legislation, a fundamental barrier between the 'private' and the 'public' is being breached. The trend in recent years has been to recognise the lesser legitimacy of government intervention in the purely private domain. While there are few issues which fall completely within the 'private' and do not overflow into the 'public', the choice of childrens' disciplinary methods is surely one of the clearer cases. Within reason (for which existing assault, sexual abuse etc laws adequately cater), bringing up children is a process entirely for the parents. Attempts to homogenise this fly in the face of the multiculturalism and diversity agendas so coveted in the UK (and Australia) at the moment.

Surely, recent reversals of years of intervening in the purely private domains (such as legalising homosexuality, liberalising divorce laws etc) have taught us a lesson? Perhaps not...