>I think it's interesting that in the 50s, 95% of parents supported spanking their children as a means of discipline. Today, that number is around 50%. I'm actually surprised it's as high as 50% today.
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>I think one of the problems is not that 50% do or do not believe in spanking, but rather effective means of discipline have not replaced spanking globally. In many cases, little or no discipline is used at all. The behavior of kids today is so unbelievable compared to past generations.

I suspect that the sentiments you've expressed in the above paragraph would be exactly the same as those you'd hear if you could quiz the adults in any generation down through history.

>Perhaps effective means of training and disciplining kids should be taught in school whether or not those kids grow up to have their own kids. I know parenting and childhood development is an elective in most schools and many kids take that course for the easy grade. I know my daughter did. They did not teach corporal punishment.

>When they asked the kids in the class how many had been spanked by their parents, almost every hand went up. My daughter didn't raise her hand because she didn't remember ever being spanked. She was too young the two times I did spank her to recall it. That doesn't mean it didn't have an effect on her. Funny that she remembers the timeouts though. I guess those were more frequent.

I'm sure spanking has an effect on the kid. I'm just not convinced that the effect is necessarily a good one. It may actually stop the 'unpleasant' behaviour, but it stops out of fear of being hit again (if caught) rather than out of a higher moral code.

When I was a kid, I was taught not to do 'bad' things because of how it would ultimately affect my own honour and self respect, not because it would mean being hit by my parents. Being hit by ones parents is a far weaker alternative imho.