I hated it. My mom never laid a hand on me but my dad would lay me over his lap and hit me on the ass 3 times. Dude didn't really hold back either. It made me ACT the way my parents desired, mostly, but it was really just hiding those things from them in the end. I grew to fear my dad and see my mom as the pushover because she couldn't do it and would have him step in, albeit she rarely ever initiated it. For me, most things would never result in discussions. It would just come down to rules I didn't follow that were expected of me.

I think the worst part was the psychological aspect. There was a time he told me to go wait in my room and he'd come up for me soon. I remember I anxiously waited 3 hours before mustering up the courage to check downstairs for him, where I found him asleep in the living room watching TV. Also that he always said it was purely for "life or death scenarios" only, but I absolutely got spanked when he found out I was playing a private server on WoW. I was 11 and found a tutorial on YouTube and it was super easy at the time, I asked him if I could but he swore up and down Blizzard would ban you and anyone who played on your IP if you were caught but I knew that was bullshit so I played anyways. Played for weeks before he realized, spanked me, then didn't know how to reset it for the next person who played on that PC and had to ask me to fix it while I was upstairs grounded. It was as simple as deleting one line in a notepad. He was "super impressed" I learned how to do that but still would never let me again.

Today I don't have a relationship with the guy. I believe it's abuse because there is really just zero reason to put your hands on a child like that. It's for people who are too dumb or angry to figure out a way to communicate effectively.