This is going to be a hot topic. There are so many different views on this kind of thing. Legally I say yes they should. A parent shouldn't be punished for spanking their child, it's insane to hear of that happening. Now I'm not for beating a kid either, there is an acceptable amount of force for spanking. Turning their bums into red raw pieces of meat is way to far in my opinion. My mom used to spank my brother and I, she was old school too with the strap. Whatever would sting. To me that is going too far, you are using a device to inflict harm to another person beyond your own strength. In society if someone came after you and started attacking you with their belt, it would be considered assault with a weapon. I don't know if it was because my mom had two boys so she figured she needed to assert her physical dominance over us or what.
But I'll tell you this, it made us afraid to ever do something bad. Of course we still did, we were kids after all, kids always do thing you shouldn't do. But it also made us afraid to ever ask her to even hang out with our friends, because she was so strict we figured she'd say no. Or make us to chores before we could, and by then it was too late to play. She figured if we wanted to have fun we should also do something in exchange for that. I disagree with that. You want kids to be responsible and learn how to function on their own, but to obstruct their social development?
I've talked to parents (many of my friends, if not all are parents) and some are afraid to raise their hand at their kids. Some have even threatened to call children's aid on them. There is always one bad apple in the bunch, one who ends up being the more wild child that is harder to control. That is just wrong, when we've gotten to a point where a parent is afraid to discipline their own child. Some kids only respond to a spanking. I used to live next door to a woman who was so blind as to the bad kid her son was, it took her common law husband to finally do something about it. She would never discipline him and chalked it up to "boys being boys". She freaked out over him spanking the boy, which all went down outside so I got to hear everything. He was sick and tired of the kid misbehaving and her doing nothing about it. Grounding or telling him not to do that did not work. He was going to do something that will work. She talked him out of it, which was too bad cause that kid was a brat. I think it would have done him some good to get a spanking.
tl;dr
Point is, a parent should not be afraid to spank their child if that is what is needed. It's been used for centuries and people have turned out just fine. Just don't beat the kid, use control and restraint. It's surprising how much a slight tap on a bare bum can do. Just enough so they feel it, but not enough that's going to leave a mark.
