[user104658]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yeah, I know it's as if people think if you don't hit your kids they're going to be out of control lunatics.

It's a self-justification process; usually they did / do hit their own children so they have to make it "necessary" in their minds in order to make it OK... and so, people who don't do the same must be raising brats.

It's some of the worst logic I've ever heard, though... one of the absolute basics of child psychology is that they're little behavioural sponges for the first couple of years. If you hit them when they don't do what you want, you're teaching them to hit others when they don't do what they want. And very little else!