need some insights here. but i liked the most rated comment: raise your children or raise your grandchildren.

There is some research to the contrary:

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/never-spanking-might-be-worse-for-kids-than-s

I tend to distrust science reporting, since it's essentially third hand information. However, it seems to confuse correlative with causal. It is absurd to equate corporal punishment, adjudicated rationally, and administered calmly with irrational and arbitrary violence. When you live in fear of a parent who might fly off the handle for any reason or no reason, you end up messed up. When you learn that there are lines which are not to be crossed and that there is expected and measured punishment for crossing those lines, you are far less likely to end up messed up.

It is not the corporal punishment which causes psychic injury, it is the constant state of fear.

Or by the same token maybe many of the kids who get hit really are more problematic to start with resulting in both corporal punishment as well as adult mental illness...

Safe to say I think it will be hard to get to a real answer here simply because it's so emotionally charged. Nobody wants to be the university or senator who approved the study that said beating kids was good... so don't expect this to ever be handled fairly and objectively.