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My mom and dad did not spank me when I was small. I remember getting grounded for a day when I nearly burned the house down at 2 and a half, being told to go to my room, and ignoring them and running to my paternal grandmother's house next door to cry about it (I had woken up early and been trying to make my parents breakfast in bed).
I'm a ginger and had very sensitive skin as a child -- including dermatographia, where when my skin is scratched I will welt. When my parents divorced we moved in with my maternal grandparents, and my maternal grandmother believed in spanking. She learned that she had to be very careful with the peach-tree switch she would use or she would hurt me. She never did any real damage and it was a "consequence" rather than a punishment. Never in anger.
When I was about 10 we moved out of that house, and I got really mouthy with my mom over going to school... I was getting beat up there daily, including during class time, and the school was doing nothing even when Mom tried to get them to fix the situation. I couldn't learn in that environment and I didn't like getting hit, so I refused to go to school that day. Mom was under a lot of stress and decided to spank me with a switch. She let her anger get the better of her and when she actually looked at my tush/legs after she was done she was immediately sorry. I was fine, no real damage, but I definitely wasn't able to go to school that day because it looked so awful. Heh. She didn't spank me again after that.
But I have no kids, so I'm not going to judge people for spanking as my grandmother did -- without anger.
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