I always knew there was more of a reason than hurt pride and a stinging butt when I got spanked as a child, and this must be it.  Of course, I’m being a bit facetious, because I’m not sure how much this truly may affect kids as adults as this news claims, but it may have a speck of truth to it I suppose. 

New “research” is claiming to show a correlation between adults who were spanked frequently as children and having sexual problems as they mature.  Here’s where it gets a little scary - it’s the type of sexual dysfunction that people who were spanked, slapped or otherwise physically punished for misbehaving when they were children experience that’s kind of scary and may make parents think twice about getting physical with their kids for being bad and instead opting for more of a psychological approach to punishment.

Adults who report being physically punished as children report more sexual problems such as engaging in sexually risky behavior, which may include promiscuity, they also engaged in more fetish type sex like masochism, and may also have fetishes about being spanked during sexual intimacy, or they also may be more verbally coercive, or even want to get more physical during or before sex. 

It may have more to do with how the individual child that is spanked looks at the correlation between love and physicality.  They may subconsciously look at love as being accompanied by physical punishment, or in less severe cases, they may just have small fetishes because they experience feelings of love or satisfaction subconsciously while experiencing feelings of physical pain.

Pretty bizarre stuff, eh?  Sounds like some Freudian type of theories to me, but I suppose it makes sense, only for certain people though.  I think it really probably depends on the relationship between parent and child and the context in which physical punishment was used, because I was spanked as a child, and do not experience any of the above sexual problems.