One defense of corporal punishment: wackier sex lives for adults. Alex Tabarrok sadly debunks the studies. Personally, I think without corporal punishment as a Freudian catharsis in their youth, very few British men would have voted for Margaret Thatcher in adulthood.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/03/spanking-and-sex/219391/
