My daughters are now 23 and 22, and corporal punishment, in the accepted sense, was never used to discipline them. While I am convinced that we were very lucky to have two kids who did not need much discipline, we always used discussion and withdrawal of privileges to deal with the occasional problems.

But I so agree with the comment by Shadoom about corporal punishment releasing the parent's anger. The extremely rare times that I (or My very vanilla wife) smacked them was when we were so scared at what they had done (say ... not looking when crossing a road) that our reaction was one of anger. Immediately after an incident such as that, the resulting discussion would have far more affect because the child was so aware of how important the matter was, because a smack was so very unusual.

Therefore, apart from the very occasional instant loss of temper that almost anybody can experience at times in their lives, I think that the type of control needed to raise children without corporal punishment is very similar to the control that is needed as a Dom.

Which presumably means that I think that practising BDSM could well be a factor in preventing abuse.

Which is interesting because when I started this reply I was going to say that it made no difference.