But we're talking about punishment of children, who might not have yet have this reasoning capacity which, as you say, feels so degrading to be frightened out of as an adults.
Of course this kids-just-don't-understand argument can be used to justify no end of vicious child abuse. I don't think anyone would disagree. But do you always find it an illegitimate argument? For instance I've hung out in many villages where any kid old enough to walk knows they'll get slapped if they venture too close to a well. Sure, the adults can try to reason with them on the cause and effect of falling down a well, while trying to explain mortality, etc. But to a three year old maybe the threat of a slap makes the more memorable impression.
Granted toddlers and wells is a melodramatic example. But for the purpose of figuring out how you're putting this all together I guess melodrama's useful. Because while you could jsut answer that village wells ought to be made child-proof, the point is that in some guise or other there will always be open wells.
I've got mixed feelings about all this and, product of my world, can't really imagine disciplining a kid by hitting. But I agree with Wojtek that to designate a priori, regardless of context, all instances of corporal punishment as child abuse renders most of humanity for most of its history as pathological.
It's maybe no coincidence that the corner of the world that's made the most fuss about corporal punishment is also the part that most systematically drives a wedge between mental and physical force. (As if a slap's physical pain can be extracted from its symbolical import, or that psychological disciplining doesn't take a material form or have embodied consequences.) More importantly it's probably no coincidence that corporal punishment is recognized as so highly damaging in a milieu where the isolated body/self is so prominent, and becomes so at such a young age.
In fact most of my experiences of witnessing corporal punishment in rural West Africa (though far more frequently: the threat of corporal punishment) weren't towards one little kid, but towards a group of kids, whose transgressions were usually carried out as a group. Sometimes only one or a couple of the kids would get the slap, but it was meant for all of them. Shared like that, I imagine those who felt the actual sting of the slap experienced something worlds apart from an isolated kid dealt a slap of identical force in some self-enclosed North American household.
These are hackneyed contrasts -- bourgeois US, rural West Africa -- but probably no more overdrawn than some sweeping assertions floating around about physical punishment, always and everywhere.
Maureen