Most kids can be controlled by all the other disciplinary methods but some just do not – my eldest for instance! All other methods must be tried first -and second and maybe third – but there comes a time when something more effective has to be resorted to. Probably he or she will learn from that one good spanking and never need another but not always. The main thing is it will almost certainly make his/her siblings toe the line anyway!
My wife was the one with the short fuse in our house and I was usually the one who felt the blast! She never actually punished the kids though, she mostly blew her top, ending with the time-honored phrase “Wait ’til your father gets home!”
When I did get in, normally everything would have calmed down and she’d have forgiven them. On the rare occasions though when that didn’t happen it would have completely undermined her authority if I hadn’t acted, so then I did. Of course not having had the bad behaviour from them I was never in a temper so I suppose it was a good system, in that sense anyway.