It kind of depends on context.
It’s probably true that children of non-aggressive parents, raised in a non-physically aggressive households, will have less tendency to act out physically when they are frustrated, but this is not necessarily centered in the lower classes in my experience. There are quite a large number of doctors, lawyers and Indian Chief mothers and fathers of my acquaintence who will administer corporal discipline without hesitation. The main differentiation in attitudes I have found is in “A” vs “B” type personalities across class lines. Some professions are overwhelmingly comprised of “B” type personalities (academia and various bureaucracies come to mind) and in these peer groups there will be a high level of distaste for corporal punishment. In other professions with more aggressive personalites like law, upper corporate levels and sales, opinions about corporal punishment, used appropriately, are less negative.
There are also cultural differences. Jewish and WASP familes tend to be less oriented toward direct corporal punishment, while African American families and Italian families (among others) often see it as normal part of the parental toolbag if used judiciously.
I don’t disagree that there are times of insanely egregious behavior by children when corporal punishment needs to be applied. I have used corporal punishment, and threats thereof, to keep my aggressive 13 year od son from physically and verbally tormenting his relatively passive 17 year sister. She does do very annoying things at times that anyone wold be pissed at, but he has an explosive temper and his reactions are way off the scale of appropriate responses, and he has developed the nasty habit of making threatening weapons out of nearby objects when he is angry. When he’s not in these confrontational situations he’s a nice, relatively obedient and helpful child.
I have him about 10 days a month and there are no issues when he is with me one on one. It’s when he is in the little alpha dog mode at my ex’s house that these confrontations occur and she (my ex) calls me on the phone to run over and be bad cop.
Speaking from hard experience I can assure you that talking to’s and non-physical punishments may work fine for some children, but they have their limits in terms of effectiveness for others. Especially innately aggressive or stubborn children.
Corporal punishments can work quickly and effectively, but they have to be very judiciously moderated and this often difficult to do. Threats of physical punishment can easily become hard wired into some frustrated parent’s dialogs with their children and at that point you can have serious problems, as the incipient threat of parental violence (whether acted on or not) becomes just a normal part of the child’s landscape.
There is aslo the issue of violence begetting violence. How much of my son’s lashing out at his sister is innate adolescent male aggression, and how much of it did he learn from seeing physical aggression used by his parents (primarily his mom FWIW) to solve problems.
Looming on the horizion is also another potentially dangerous issue I have addressed with him directly. I have told him that by the time he is 16 or 17 he is probably going to be 6’3" or better and weigh well over 200 lbs, and that he needs to get a handle on how he expresses his frustration, because I do not intend to be rolling around in the front yard at the age of 50 battling a large teenager, and that he may be put in juvenile hall if he becomes uncontrollable. He scoffs at this.
In the end I sometimes have to use physical restraint, or come within a hair’s breadth of it, to get him wound down. Reasoned dialog is near useless when he is angry. I don’t have a long term solution, but there are times when corporal restraint and punishment is immediately necessary.
