I was a spanked kid. I had a violent and easily angered parents. Getting hit never worked, it just made me cover things up.

One thing dear old dad didn’t anticipate, though: spankings made me vindictive. I started to retaliate in creative and expensive ways, and when you have a kid who starts showing signs of being mechanically inclined at six months of age, you really don’t want them to be a vindictive teenager.