---
title: "Could the law over-protect our children?"
date: "2014-06-26T12:36:36+01:00"
modified: "2014-06-26T12:36:36+01:00"
url: "https://rationalists.org.uk/articles/could-the-law-over-protect-our-children/"
post_id: 6236
---

# Could the law over-protect our children?

**This article is a preview from the Summer 2014 edition of New Humanist. You can [find out more and subscribe here](/articles/4658/summer-2014-new-humanist-out-now-war-and-peace-josie-long-peter-tatchell-lars-von-trier-and-much-more).**

It may seem like a logical step to outlaw extreme emotional cruelty to a child, just as we already punish physical or sexual abuse. But a group of social scientists are questioning the evidence that backs up the consensus – raising wider questions about the way our society approaches parenting.

At stake is the campaign for the “Cinderella law”, a bid led by the charity Action For Children to criminalise emotional abuse in the severest cases. “I’ve met children who have been scapegoated, bullied, left alone in dark rooms in beds full of maggots,” says its director of public policy, Helen Donohoe. “They are vilified and victimised by their parents, the very people who are supposed to love them best of all.”

Social workers believe the long-term damage caused by emotional cruelty is far worse than that which follows sexual abuse. Yet whereas the care system has been quick to respond whenever evidence of physical or sexual abuse appears, often children are left in the home even when emotional abuse is obvious. Joanna Nicolas, a child protection consultant, believes changing the law could change this. “We have to send out a very clear message that emotional abuse is as damaging as other types,” she says.

Whether it actually is as damaging remains a topic for debate, however. Nicolas cites a “growing body of evidence” suggesting the worst effects of abuse are mental, not physical. And American neuroscientists have even suggested this kind of neglect shapes the way a child’s brain develops. But a group of British social care professors believe this might be going too far. “The proposals for the new law repeatedly invoke what is in fact very early and unsettled knowledge taken from neuroscience,” they argued in a [recent article](http://theconversation.com/cinderella-law-proposals-are-unhelpful-and-draconian-25106) for online magazine *The Conversation*. “We resolutely do not know how much damage is caused by ‘emotional neglect’, already a very loose category; in all likelihood, we never will, except in those cases where it is already patently obvious.”

Critics of the “Cinderella law” say the science has been “extrapolated miles away from its original domain”. Professor Brigid Featherstone of the Open University says the research is “simply not policy ready” – but is being used to “drive a whole state interventionist project”. This project, it’s argued, is the result of a cultural shift in recent decades, where increasing emphasis has been placed on the emotional bonds between parent and child.

For three decades, argues Featherstone, parents have faced intensifying pressure from Westminster. Some parents, she points out, are in a better position to make the right choices than others. No matter how poor you might be, nowadays everyone faces judgement – for letting their children get too fat, or for smoking in cars, or even just for disciplining them in the wrong way.

Initially the Coalition government umm’d and ah’d about this campaign. Now they’re indicating they’re willing to back it, despite warnings that the reform could criminalise the actions of millions of parents. (The measure was included in [June’s Queen’s speech](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27693587), which took place after this article went to press.)

“They don’t listen,” says Conservative MP Robert Buckland angrily when the criticisms are put to him. The focus of the reform, he insists, is about tackling “the systematic terrorising of children by parents who make their lives a living hell”. Buckland, the campaign’s champion in parliament, says only the severest cases will be affected. As he puts it: “There is no way on earth I will stand up and support the opening of the floodgates to prevent the sort of firm but fair parenting that I myself have administered for my children.”

Setting the legal bar at the right level isn’t the only challenge, either. Sentences served on parents won’t always be in the best interests of the child. There’s a long list of reasons to exempt some parents, too: those who are themselves victims of domestic abuse, and those whose children have extreme behavioural difficulties, for example.

Everyone accepts only a minority of cases – a few hundred every year – will feature emotional abuse in the absence of physical or sexual cruelty. Working out who they are, the social care professors say, is not going to be easy. As they put it: “We pity the police and the Crown Prosecution Service trying to make categorical judgements in such a minefield.”

For those who support the law, however, these difficulties can be ironed out – it’s the principle that trumps everything else. “We see it in the children that we work with all the time,” says Nicolas simply. The debate looks set to continue.