I want to throw it right back at them , or break their arms . <| sep |> I thrive off of your sarcasm <| sep |> The first Mitchell Ness one is amazing might cop . <| sep |> Chess with friends is very stimulating <| sep |> Sidewalks the new hills <| sep |> Fucking rad . What a kickass time to be alive . <| sep |> I said the two words are not interchangeable . They are not . One implies limits and circumstances , the other does not . You are using the more vague terminology to be intentionally inflammatory . When people refer to selfdefense , they don ' t refer to it as killing . Yes , it is killing , but in a very specific circumstance . The two are not interchangeable . Every one of those studies has the same selfadmitted flaw in that they do not and cannot control for the manner and situations in which the spankings are delivered . From your last link As in many areas of science , some researchers disagree about the validity of the studies on physical punishment . Robert Larzelere , PhD , an Oklahoma State University professor who studies parental discipline , was a member of the APA task force who issued his own minority report because he disagreed with the scientific basis of the task force recommendations . While he agrees that parents should reduce their use of physical punishment , he says most of the cited studies are correlational and don ' t show a causal link between physical punishment and longterm negative effects for children . or Gershoff says all of the studies on physical punishment have some shortcomings . Unfortunately , all research on parent discipline is going to be correlational because we can ' t randomly assign kids to parents for an experiment . So no , study after study has not shown that spanking has deleterious impacts . They have shown correlations that may indicate it is bad or , equally that it is often used incorrectly or a variety of other possibilities because they are correlations . They correctly go on to point out that we shouldn ' t throw out the research , with which I agree . How punishments of all kinds can most effectively be used in different situations and different personality types is an area of study that needs much more work . To be honest , the haphazard and inconsistent nature that most parents take toward punishments of any kind seems to be the larger and more significant issue to me , but that is just my opinion . You claim that people which say they are fine after being spanked have weakass arguments and yet you started off with your own anecdotal experience as a counter and also used it as your justification of being knowledgeable on the subject . You claim to know that trust issues come from spanking . That seems a stretch to have a 100 % certainty of the source of one ' s personality issues unless the spanking went beyond social boundaries into the land recognized as abuse . Very rarely and usually only in extreme circumstances do our mental issues have a singular source . So if them offering their anecdotal experience isn ' t an argument and is actually an excuse , then does that also make your anecdotal experience an excuse as well ? I don ' t think so , but I also don ' t think their ' s is an excuse either , which is consistent .