I don't feel that because one person turned out 'alright' despite being punished with a belt, that it is a good idea. I can offer examples of people who did NOT turn out well and were punished with a belt. So 'I got hit and I am fine' doesn't really solve the problem. There is research that shows that physical punishment tends to make kids more aggressive in general and more tense.
I have seen the research, and I do believe it has some merit. I'm no namby pamby liberal, and I believe in discipline, but a beating with a belt, it does bother me.
I am old and I was raised 'back in the day' when it was ordinary and accepted. I don't like how a lot of kids behave these days, but unlike others, I don't think spoiled kids are new. I don't think there are that many more of them now. In the fifties when I was young people were screaming about Dr. Spock being too liberal and ruining kids (he wasn't actually against spanking, he just believed in saving it for special occasions).
I can see maybe one hand smack on the butt for something really horrible, I suppose, in extremis, but I'd be very careful that it didn't become how everything 'had to be done'. What's horrible for a four or five year old? Hitting your sister? Will hitting you teach you that hitting is wrong, or that it's the way people dominate someone?
I think that quite often, a kid that obeys out of fear of being beat, to any extent, has a hard time developing a sense of doing something because it needs to be done, or it's the right thing to do.
A boss of mine used to say you could tell all the adults who were beat as kids, because when the clock ticked 5, they ran out the door, even if a customer was on the line, as long as no one was watching them. He felt such an environment did not result in adults with a sense of responsibility, it was just, was someone watching them? No, then duck out the door. That really surprised me, that anyone would even say that, I had never even thought of it that way.
When I was a teen I worked for a lady who had a horse whip in her bathroom, no, not a bat or a popper, a whip. When she got mad, the kids got hit with the horse whip. One of the kids had dyslexia, but back then, most people thought he was just stubborn and lazy. When he'd come home with a bad grade, the mother would hit him with the horse whip on his skin. More than a couple times.
My cousin had a very 'physical' father and he grew up to be a very angry, tense, defensive person. He was smart and did a lot of good work, but he seemed to think of himself just about how you would imagine a kid that got beat alot. He never thought it was good enough, he did sometimes get in trouble at work for constantly redoing things and wasting a lot of time because it was 'not good enough' and being overly critical of other's work.
He got in trouble at work for being so defensive any time someone asked him a simple question. He always thought everyone was against him, and had several unsuccessful marriages, he had a hard time getting along with anyone day to day. He tried antidepressants several times, but he wasn't patient enough to take them long enough to even see if they would help.
But nor do I adore the idea of sitting down and talking and guilting kids into doing things or indulging in long explanations and discussions. I don't believe in making kids in to neurotic little messes that way. And that's what I think it does. Dated a feller raised that way. I said I did not want to go to his company party, and he said, 'Let's sit down and talk about ways that we can make you comfortable with going to the party'. You can well imagine my next two words. What ridiculous manipulation, for an adult or a child.
One thing I have learned over the years is that people act how they were raised, and they act that way, all their lives, very consistently. They act the same way their parents treated them (unless they get a lot of therapy!!!!)
If they were wheedled and whined into doing things, you can tell. If they were beat every time they did something, you can tell. If they never have any discipline at all, and always did what they wanted, YOU CAN REALLY TELL.
A friend of mine adopted a kid and when he did something she didn't like, she'd sit down and talk talk talk talk to him ad nauseum, about how 'you are a kid and it's your job to play, and it's my job to....' WHATEVER. THE KID IS TWO AND A HALF. The kid would be sitting there with this puzzled, confused look on his face...poor kid.
What about the other side?
For example, a kid we did respite care with was beat to a bloody pulp, I mean he could not open his eyes, for accidentally tipping over his milk glass at the table. Since he was being punished for carelessness, the parent (SUCCESSFULLY, I might add, back in the day) justified the punishment as his right, his kid, he decides how to punish.
The parent was a case. He lost his temper at the drop of a hat, and the kid caught it every time. THAT kid, not the other one. Whatever happened, he caught it. So he'd go to school and he'd hit other kids when he wanted something. Some years after that, a friend of mine told me the kid had killed himself.
Another kid I know that was the one who got punished, he would up an adult with seizures, depression, and a whole lot of other problems.
So I am not so sure it really is that good.
I think there is a happy medium, and I think it's smack in the middle BETWEEN the cajoling and the pounding. A few simple, well understood rules, age appropriate explanations, a rare smack on the butt isn't the end of the world, but a beating with a belt, and LOTS of beatings with belts, I'd have to say I don't think so.
