OK, I just went with "parental choice with benefits and drawbacks."
Yes, I was spanked as a child, but not regularly and not often.
Skimming through the thread, I see lots of interesting points.
Louise's report on Parent Effectiveness Training is very interesting, but the first thought that popped into my head is, What do you do with a very young child who does something potentially dangerous--like get into the medicine cabinet? I got spanked for something like that once. I wasn't even in school yet. I climbed up on a chair in the kitchen to go after something I saw on shelf in the cupboard, the package of yummy, orange-tasting chewing gum--which actually was a sore-throat remedy called Aspergum (do they still make that stuff?). That probably wouldn't have killed me, but after that spanking, did I ever go after something like that again? Hell, no.
I'd rule out belts and switches, though. To me that doesn't sound like spanking, that sounds like beating (OK, so maybe it's a fine line). My mother used her hand, and, on occasion, a small wooden paddle, a little smaller than a ping pong paddle, that came form a toy we had in my childhood--a rubber ball attached by a rubber band to the wooden paddle, the idea being you kept bouncing the ball off the paddle (do they still make those things?).
As for Scott's suggestion, I've long felt that there are plenty of young thugs running around--and quite a few older ones--who would benefit more from a public flogging than they would from sitting in jail, where they just learn even worse villainy than what put them behind bars in the first place.
