The ruling Civic Platform, supported by the Democratic Left Alliance opposition, want to ban parents beating their children.

According to the proposed legislation, child beating will be forbidden and severely punished. Social workers will have the right to take children away from abusive parents.

The joint initiative of the ruling Civic Platform and the left aims at reducing the number of home abuse victims, which is thought to be high in Poland.  Every fifth Pole admits beating their child and as many as 63 percent say that they were smacked in their childhood. Thirty eight percent of Poles experienced being hit with a belt or other object. 

When the bill was first proposed last year, Prime Minister Donald Tusk admitted that he had smacked one of his children, which he said, made him feel like a “hypocrite”. (mg)