{"id":506346,"date":"2025-10-17T08:25:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/506346\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T08:25:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:25:14","slug":"fionola-meredith-the-legal-protection-of-parents-hitting-kids-in-northern-ireland-shames-our-society-and-the-politicians-who-lead-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/506346\/","title":{"rendered":"Fionola Meredith: The legal protection of parents hitting kids in Northern Ireland shames our society and the politicians who lead us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Apparently they believe that parents have a God-given right to wield authority over their children, which can include physical chastisement: what the Christian Institute calls \u201ca loving smack\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/a24cd426-1171-48ee-b087-e919dbbb6c1a.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">When are we going to stop legally hitting kids in Northern Ireland? It\u2019s outrageous that the law continues to provide for it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Scotland banned smacking in 2020, and Wales followed suit in March 2022. Yet in England and Northern Ireland, the defence of reasonable punishment is still allowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apparently they believe that parents have a God-given right to wield authority over their children, which can include&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[165897,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-506346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-fionola-meredith","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115388555645177744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}