Should parents punish children?

Q: I do my best to parent from a place of rest and peace, and don’t use punishments or consequences, such as smacking, timeouts or taking away privileges. I get a lot of pushback on this and am often told I’m not parenting my children biblically. What do you think?

Approaches to parenting should be driven by the gospel, but also wisely rooted within local culture. There’s variance between different parts of the world and, of course, as Christians, we should be subverting the culture where necessary, too, such as when violence is the norm. 

When I was younger, being smacked was normal; it didn’t mean I was a bad person, just that I’d overstepped the mark, and my parents wanted to help me realise my behaviour was not good.