>the goal is ensuring your children are prepared for adulthood.

Where is the situation as an adult where getting assaulted as a kid got you prepared? Pain tolerance? Ability to withstand being assaulted? Those aren't valuable life skills. If you want to beat your kids, don't make up justifications for it. There are plenty of well-balanced people who weren't spanked as kids. There are a million ways to properly enforce discipline without laying your hands on kids. Most of them fit within the social order they will encounter growing up. Their teachers won't spank them. Their supervisor (or client) won't spank them. Most of the conflicts, if not all of the conflicts, they will have will be verbal. The better you equip them to talk shit out, the better off they will be.

I'm a parent. I could count on one hand the number of times I've spanked my kids. I regret each one. And I'm talking a swat on the behind. Like one. In hindsight, I can think of 100 different ways I could have disciplined them. It's lazy parenting.


Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com