Sometimes when I see posts about spanking someone will comment “I was spanked as a kid and I’m fine!” as an argument in favor of spanking kids and inevitably people will be like, “you aren’t fine you think its good to hit kids!” which sure!-- although this is not going to be a compelling argument to anyone who is ok with spanking-- BUT ALSO they are almost certainly not fine in other ways??
It reminds me very strongly of a coworker I had who once complained that kids today weren’t scared of their parents and announced she thought kids should be a little scared of their parents-- SHE had always been a bit scared of her parents after all! And I didn’t say it because there’s no point in antagonizing your coworkers if it won’t accomplish anything but internally I was like... ma’am by the time you were 17 you had a coke habit, a baby, and you’d dropped out of high school...
When we met some years later she was doing ok but I knew from all her talk about her teen years that uh... being afraid of her parents didn’t stop her from doing a lot of dumb shit and also from just generally being an unhappy teenager. And yet the reality of what an incredibly wild youth she had didn’t stop her from feeling like OBVIOUSLY her parents child rearing methods must be the best ones!
So yeah anytime anyone says that they were spanked as a kid and they turned out fine I always wonder what absolutely horrific shit they consider fine.