My older sister and I were, not so much smacked as spanked and disciplined that way. My mum works with young children so she always knew how much "force" to use and just so we got the hint that our behvaiour was bad. But we were never overly bad, so it was a rarity that my mum had to do that. However, with my younger sister, my mum never disciplined her or spanked her and her behaviour is terrible now. She's undesciplined and has no manners. I don't want to say that spanking her when she was younger would've worked but I believe that it might've helped and she'd be a little more respectful now. Having said that, I think spanking is okay, to a degree. smacking a child's hand for touching something they shouldn't have or for hitting someone then that's understandable. But parents beating their kids with hockey sticks because the child ate a popsicle in the wrong room or holding a child's hand to a stovetop because they came home late is way past the line of acceptable.