I was raised in the South mostly, where corporal punishment is the normal way of doing things. I never met anybody that seemed the worse for this. I myself was spanked many times as a punishment, both in school and at home. I seem to have turned out fine.
Practidally all the kids I have known that have turned out badly were not disciplined effectively at home. I am trying to think of exceptions as far as people that I have known. I can only think of perhaps one person that was spanked as a child, that refused to change his behavior, and persisted in bad behavior, and even he finally straightened out as an adult for the most part. On the other hand, I have known plenty of kids that were not disciplined that went bad. There were plenty of kids that were not spanked that were good kids for the most part, but every juvenile delinquent I have known grew up in an atmosphere of no discipline, or no love. Both are necessary, discipline and love. One without the other, will result in failure most of the time. There are always exceptions of course, and there are kids that will have everything going for them, and they grow up in homes with lots of love and strong discipline, but still go bad. These are the exceptions, and not the rule.
We have more problems with violence today than we ever had in the past in this country, and less people spank their kids today than did 100 years ago. I do not draw the conclusion that this is a cause/effect relationship, but I still think that its interesting to note that if spanking has such harmful effects, and causes violence, why didnt we have much worse problems in say the 19th century US, when practically everybody spanked their children.
Spanking as a method of punishment, when applied reasonably can be quite effective. This is not child abuse. Harming a child IS child abuse. Beating a child qualifies as abuse. Spanking does not. There are some kids that will not respond to any lesser punishment. Of course there are kids that will not even respond to this, but I think that these cases are rare.
I think that keeping discipline in the home is a matter of having clear rules, with well-defined punishments. The punishments must be consistently carried out or the effect is lost.
This is an issue that will always be debated I suppose, with those that were raised in homes that did not spank, not able to see the other viewpoint, and vice versa. I think that calling it child abuse is pretty ridiculous though. There are plenty of us that were raised in homes and were spanked regularly as a punishment, and we turned out fine, and we love our parents. We were not harmed in any way by this experience, on the contrary, I feel that I would not have as much self-discipline as an adult if I had not been strictly disciplined as a child.
