So if I don't "strike" my children, I'm not disciplining them? My kids would beg to differ. They are incredibly well-behaved, and I have never physically hurt them as punishment.

You can discipline without resorting to violence. People do it everyday in school, workplace, and all manners of life. I'm not sure why violent discipline is ok when it comes to children.

I'm not up to date on the research on corporal punishment, but isn't the obvious distinction that adults can respond to rational incentives, and children cannot?

Scientists seem to take a strong stand against corporal punishment, but I do have to say, as an Asian dude I know _lots_ of Asian people (well really everyone from Asia) who are brilliant (engineers, surgeons, businessmen) and seem mentally fine and well and they were disciplined physically both at home and school.

My pet theory is that since in school environments physical punishment was distributed "equally", that's not as bad.

I really wonder how far back corporal punishment dates in the west, and whether brilliant people like Einstein ever received physical punishment.

How is that obvious? I have two kids that respond quite well to rational incentives. On the other hand some adults I know respond to irrational incentives all the time.

That is a difference (well past the teens, even, to an extent), and even without the piles of research on the harmful effects of corporal punishment on children, it should be immediately obvious from that difference why corporal punishment of children (whose entire theory is demonstrating an unacceptably high cost of the course of action) makes less, not more, sense than corporal punishment of adults.

Children are absolutely rational when you present the incentives appropriately.

I once saw a mother in a grocery store with her two little ones in the cart. The older child smacked the smaller one. The mother quickly smacked the older child and said emphatically "We! Don't! Hit!"

It doesn't take a scientific study to realize that teaching children not to be violent by punishing them with violence is confusing. Especially to a small child.

She was just too tired to be logical.

And what makes you think that the generation of “spanked” kids grew up as a well behaving individuals? As far as I see there is less violence nowadays compared to times before

Violent crime is down from the 1990's, but still double what it was in the 1950's: http://www.newgeography.com/content/003799-crime-down-urban-....

Your cite starts in the 60s not the 50s and it is for total crime rather than violent crime. Violent crime is about the same now as it was in the 60s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States