Should corporal punishment be allowed?

Corporal punishment is at odds with societal roles

Question: Should corporal punishment be allowed?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, corporal punishment is bad
Argument‹6 of 6: Corporal punishment is at odds with societal roles

Authority figures, including the government, teachers, and parents, are supposed to offer protection from physical harm. A child expects a certain level of trust and understanding from a relationship with these figures, which is why corporal punishment is at odds with the societal roles these people purport to inhabit.

The argument

Children always hold a certain level of trust in authority figures in their lives, whether they be parents, teachers, or caregivers. That trust is the basis on which those roles function: a child follows guidance, accepts correction and seeks help because the adult is understood to be a source of safety. That trust is incredibly strained when any form of corporal punishment is introduced into that relationship, especially between children and their parents, because the same person is then both the protection against harm and the source of it. In addition to a strong correlation between anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and aggression, and corporal punishment, hitting and physical violence automatically break any form of understanding in the relationship. The correlations indicate that the damage is not confined to the moment of punishment or to childhood, while the breach of understanding describes what happens immediately: a child who must be wary of a caregiver cannot rely on them in the way the role assumes. According to Verywellfamily.com, "Trust, stability, safety, and security are the keys to helping children develop the skills they need to manage their behavior. Corporal punishment erodes that relationship and makes behavior management more difficult." The point is that the conditions being destroyed are the same conditions the child needs in order to learn self-regulation, so the method removes the foundation the desired result depends on. Corporal punishment not only permanently mentally scars the children involved, but it has the opposite effect on the children that parents so fervently wish to manage. It is on these grounds that corporal punishment is said to be at odds with societal roles: it asks parents and teachers to secure obedience by the one means that undermines the trusted position from which they are supposed to be guiding the child at all.

Premises

[P1]Children place trust in authority figures like parents and teachers, and corporal punishment severely strains that trust and breaks down the relationship. [P2] Corporal punishment correlates with anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and aggression, eroding the stability and security children need to manage their own behaviour. [C] Therefore, corporal punishment is at odds with the caregiving roles of parents and teachers and is bad.

Counter-arguments

The definition of "corporal punishment" is ambiguous here, and the distinction between severely "hitting" and "spanking" as well as the frequency at which that punishment occurs is unclear. The studies on this supposed correlation are famously flimsy - not that they are not true, but the level of evidence produced from these studies is still inconclusive. The relationship between child and authority is different based off of each individual person too, which adds to the overall sweeping narrative that even light "spanking" for incredibly serious offenses should not be necessarily seen as "abusive" or "punishment." The definitions of these terms must be more clearly laid out before a definitive answer to this question can be presented.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The "correlation" must still be studied at length and the definition of corporal punishment must be examined first before laying any wide-sweeping claims about its effectiveness or lack thereof. [Rejecting P3] We should not necessarily ban "corporal punishment" completely.