Just recently I saw the following gem.
I think that most people feel that spanking is bad. in some cases, a spanking can help. I very rarely had to spank my kids,,but when I did, they knew that it was because they were doing something that they had been told time and time again not to do.
Beating and spanking are two different things.
Spanking with the goal of producing healthy happy socially adjusted adults is about as adept as the rubber mallet approach to TV repair.
"Duhhhrrrrrr it not doing what me want HIT HIT! I not hit hard... see now it work YAY! Me good parent!"
It's quite simple, on a number of levels. (albeit apparently not simple enough for the shockingly limited average intellect of the pro spanking parent.)
Would you tolerate a spanking from your employer? If he or she were to give you one, what would the charge be? Assault? Sexual battery? Can you talk your way out of assault saying "Well I didn't hit X very hard."
News flash: Children are human citizens and deserve equal protection under the law. Can you legally hit a citizen just because they annoy you?
Past all that, who says what you are asking is reasonable? I knew plenty of people well beyond their parents in both wisdom and intelligence. Knocking some girl up or getting knocked up does not instantly make you fit to parent responsibly or issue order backed by physical force.
That's why we train police and soldiers, and even they have a very hard time of it.
If you're too inept to trick or convince a child into willfully undertaking the desired set of actions, and the only recourse you can think of is punishment, (of any kind, in my opinion) then you're too stupid and callous to be a parent in the first place.
http://nospank.net/arnall.htm
The only reason this is still a debate at all is because The Company wants absentee teen morons raising children so they can provide TV, School, military, and religion, as alternates. Thereby halting social evolution, which is the largest threat to established institutions ever devised.
The average American parent actually raises their own children about as much as the sap paying a 20$ a month guilt check to some kid in Somalia.
