For some parents spanking means hitting the child on the buttocks. For others it refers to all hitting of a child, such as slapping the hand or the child's face. Spanking, hitting, and slapping are all forms of physical punishment or corporal punishment. Parents who were hit when they were teenagers are more likely to do the same thing to their own children. The more a parent was hit as a teenager the greater the chances that parent will physically abuse his or her own child.
White parents use more corporal punishment than minority group parents.
From the research of Murray Straus and others, we've learned a great deal about the effects of spanking that we didn't know before. Straus reports on the following harmful side effects of spanking. Aggression Spanking teaches that hitting others is morally correct. That means it's only correct if the other person is doing something wrong and won't stop it. A child rarely walks up to another child and hits him or her for no reason.