Research also suggests that sleeping eight hours a night is beneficial to your health.  I have problems with both.  I always seem to wake up about 7 hours in, and I can't always get back to sleep.  Oh yeah... and I won't slap, spank, or hit my kid.  

I think the main point is that physical punishment is most effective when it is pretty immediate, and roughly proportionate, so that it is clearly associated with the disapproved behaviour.

This makes the 'Hell' scenario the worst possible approach for disciplining anyone.

I suspect that the OT recommendations for stoning might also be seen as a bit over the top...

i think it's important to be sensitive to your child's behavioral patterns and how they respond to certain kinds of punishment--every child is different, after all--but i think corporal punishment, at least as far as open-palmed slaps on the buttocks, are beneficial to the majority of children.

the important thing is that a parent never make a threat they're not prepared to back up.  i can't stand parents who say shit like "if you don't stop, i'll wring your neck" or "i brought you into this world and i can take you out" or "i'll turn this car around right now" when they're 500 miles into the trip.  children will never take such asinine statements seriously; they'll think the parent is full of shit--and the parent is full of shit.

my mother was a firm believer in spanking, and thus she never had to spank very much at all, because all three of us knew, from rare but valuable experience, that if we refused to heed her warning it would be followed by immediate consequences.  my mother was a very loving and affectionate parent, but she was also a strict disciplinarian and insisted on good manners, both in and out of the home.  none of us ever dared throw tantrums, especially in public, but we never felt any lack of love.  because she was so strict when we were small, as we grew it was easier to earn her trust.  i never had any of the typical "teenage" conflicts.  i was allowed to go out and behave as i pleased (my mother was actually very frank and liberal when it came to alcohol, sex, etc.) as long as i didn't cross certain bounderies, like drinking and driving or staying out later than 11 without calling.  honestly, i can't imagine a better parent, and barring any unusual circumstances i plan to use her methods with very little modification.

I agree with Iwbiek.  I know in my psychology class this past semester the book said that spanking is counter-effective for dealing with aggression, but my parents spanked my siblings and me however rarely it was necessary and none of us are aggressive personalities at all.  I do think it depends on the child, and punishment, whether physical or otherwise, should always be swift and proportionate to the misbehavior.

The reported results of the study are overblown. There were only 179 teenagers studied, and only a quarter of them, about 44 were never spanked. The chances of statistical fluke or sampling bias are quite high. And they were only teenagers, not adults, so the claims that spanking kids leads to better results 'later in life' are misleading. And it was only one study compared to dozens of other studies saying the opposite.

I'll also note that the more kids were hit, the worse they did. Only the small group of non-spanked broke that trend. Some parents may go to the opposite extreme of providing no discipline at all, because they don't have the parenting skills to discipline without hitting. The study does not have sufficient strength to draw out those distinctions.

Overall, I wouldn't get your hopes up. The vast majority of evidence (including among those spanked in this study) shows that spanking is ineffective and the more it is used, the worse things gets. There are better non-violent methods of discipline. Once again, education is the key. In this case, parent education.

Doomy is an advocate of child violen... err... discipline (go figure)

Keep your pusification studies, Pain is a great teacher... and this world would be a better place if more parents beat their kids

I think that Iwbiek is right. Furthermore, some children would benefit from spanking much more than other. A parent must recognize who is like what. For example, I was always stressed from mere screaming, I hated that, and spanking was not much better.
But my older brother, he's such a ruffian and even though he was spanked a lot, it was not nearly enough. He would actually still need a military (or prison) discipline, to be victimized by a big sergeant, to do publically beneficient works and to clean toilets with his own toothbrush. It's diffcult to find someone so selfish, lazy, rowdy, and inwardly uncertain as my older brother. I've heard that he has a better second personality, but he doesn't bring it home. It's good that he's out most of the time.
Thanks to this bad example, I really understand how important is the discipline in parenting. Children are indeed animals, some more than others. Who's planning to have children, should plant some hazel bushes. Hazel cane is very effective tool.

 I'm a proponent of those shock collars you get for dogs....

Part of the reason I opt out of the procreation game.