B. Spanking Works Where Other Methods Fail.

People who deny the value of spanking, offer no workable alternatives.
Some authorities say to "reason" with the child till he agrees.

"Intelligent parents rarely resort to corporal punishment ... An intelligent disciplinary method is the use of reasoning at the child's level of understanding..." - Growing Superior Children, pp. 452 (via Plain Truth about Child Rearing, p. 26). My translation: "Spanking proves you lack intelligence. If you were smart enough, you could talk them into obeying!"

This statement flatly denies Bible teaching. Reasoning with children is important and should not be neglected, but it has limits. Often immediate obedience is needed, as when a child is playing in the street and a car is coming! Some children are too young and inexperienced to understand the wisdom of the parents' reasons. And often the child is just too stubborn and self-willed to listen. In such cases, no amount of reasoning will change him.

Dr. Dobson (DTD, pp. 18ff) tells of a young mother who had been taught to reason her child into obedience. When she put her three-year-old son in his crib, he spat in her face. When she tried to reason with him, he repeated it. She finally fled the room as he spat on the back of the door! She said she could never control him after that; as a teenager he rebelled against every request she made.

We need to reason with our children as part of our instruction. But there are times when every child determines to have his own way, and no amount of reasoning will convince him. The result becomes a war of attrition, in which the child will continue arguing till he wears you down. He must be taught that "crime does not pay." Pain works wonders.

Again, some suggest that we just "control the child's environment."

We are told to not make demands and children won't rebel. Just remove all temptation and give the children recreation and interesting toys; then they will never want to do bad things. My translation: "Just let the kid have his own way, and there will be no conflicts."
Again, there is value in keeping temptation out of the child's way. But to deny the value of spanking simply contradicts the Bible, and experience shows that it simply does not work.
Matthew 16:24 - To be a follower of Jesus we must learn to deny and control ourselves. The child who is given everything he wants never learns self-sacrifice and self-denial. He becomes self-centered and thinks the world must always adapt to him and give him what he wants. As he grows up, his demands become bigger and bigger, till finally his parents cannot satisfy his demands. His environment cannot always be controlled, so sooner or later he must face temptation and learn to control himself. Otherwise, he is destined for major trouble in life, because he thinks the world owes him a living; but the world will not always give him what he wants. The result is unhappy, miserable delinquents, rebels, and criminals such as flood our land.
Dr. Dobson (DTD, pp. 14f) tells of another family where the parents always gave their daughter whatever she wanted, never crossed her, and never made demands. She became a selfish and disrespectful teenager, throwing terrible tantrums if she did not get her way. They tried to give a party to please her, but she brought in disrespectful, rebellious friends who proceeded to tear things up. When the mother said something that angered her, the daughter "struck her down and left her helpless" lying in a pool of blood on the floor. The daughter then went out unconcerned to dance with her friends in the backyard.

This is an extreme example. But the point is that without spanking and physical punishment child rearing is doomed to failure. Spanking inflicts a relatively mild and temporary pain by means of which the child learns lessons that will teach him to avoid much greater hardships and trouble later in life and in eternity. In this way, spanking benefits the child and is therefore an act of love.