Most parents know the feeling only too well. Maybe Susie darted into the street during a game of tag, and Dad panicked. Or Timmy defiantly dumped his dinner on the floor.

Most parents have had the urge to spank their children, and many have done it.

In those situations, parents often don't take time to think. Recently, a woman chased her 5 year–old daughter around the food court of a mall. When she finally caught up, the mother, embarrassed, exhausted and frustrated, swatted her daughter's bottom lightly.

"I hate spanking her.... I haven't done it more than a few times," she said. "But sometimes there's nothing else to do."

Well, that isn't really the case, researchers say. But that mom in the mall isn't the type they worry about the most. It's the parents who spank as a habitual form of punishment.

According to a study conducted by U.S. News & World Report, 65 percent of Americans sanction spanking as a regular form of discipline, not much less than the 74 percent who condoned the practice in 1946.

Kevin Ryan at the Center for Advancement of Ethics and Character in Boston says this figure represents a backlash against the antispanking movement promoted by psychologists and educators in the 1990s.

Other organizations, such as Pro Spank, aim to convince parents that spanking as a form of discipline is the only way "Americans" can "stop turning out children who [are] disrespectful, immoral or amoral, committing unspeakable crimes unheard of in the days when a parent's totalitarian authority was never undermined," says David Devereaux of Pro Spank.

But Murray Straus says spanking should never be an option. Straus, founder and codirector of the Family Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire, is a sociologist who has researched the abuse of children and spouses and wrote "Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families."

He says the family itself is a "cradle of violence" and that reducing "the largely taken–for–granted family violence called spanking is one of the most important steps we can make toward achieving a less violent world."

Thomas Gordon's 1970 million–plus "Parent Effectiveness Training" counseled parents not to physically punish their children rather to treat them "much as we treat a friend or a spouse."

And researcher Irwin Hyman, a psychologist at Temple University, also linked spanking and violence in society in his 1997 book, "The Case Against Spanking." "We should pass a law against spanking," he told CNN in 1997.

Other countries have done that. In Norway and Sweden, it is illegal to spank a child. In some U.S. states and Canadian provinces, it is illegal for teachers to spank.

"Hitting a child to stop misbehavior may be the easy way in the short run, but in the slightly longer run, it makes the job of being a parent more difficult," Straus says. "This is because spanking reduces the ability of parents to influence their children, especially in adolescence, when they are too big to control with physical force."

Nonspanking parents, he says, rely on various strategies, including setting clear rules, providing love and affection, recognizing and rewarding good behavior and explaining things thoroughly to the child.

It doesn't always work. If a preschooler doesn't respond to an explanation, many experts say, a timeout is the best approach. Timeouts are especially effective for this age group because preschoolers are just beginning to get in touch with their emotions. Timeouts give them time alone to collect themselves.

A grade–schooler who ignores the rules can be better punished by having privileges such as time with friends or watching TV revoked, Straus said.

Punishing toddlers is more difficult, experts say, but referring to the child's sense of empathy often works. Straus suggests "lap talks," during which the parent holds the toddler and makes eye contact, explaining why what the child did was wrong.