The thing is, I don't have a clue. To say that it is or isn't genetic misses the *vast* number of different combinations that can be produced when sperm meets egg. Then there are a ga-billion things that can happen during the pregnancy that can have impacts, many of which won't even be *noticed* by the mother, and then there are the the millions upon millions of things that could happen and not be remarked upon during the early formatives... too many possibilities.

All I'm saying is that in this particular chicken/egg scenario, there are an awful lot of people shouting "CHICKEN!!" With great certainty, and not a little self-righteousness, when "egg" is just about as plausible.

In all honesty, a lot on this depends on *who* is doing the study, whether they lump the straight-up abusers in with the corporal discipliners, where that line is drawn, where the sample set was collected (I am going to posit that children raised in urban left-of-center communities that *are* spanked are going to be *much* more prone to psychological problems than children in conservative rural areas that are, because in the first, it's abnormal to be spanked, and in the second it's normal, so the trauma of being struck will be greater because it's also *unusual*), and enough other factors that I doubt that there's any real chance of separating the signal from the noise.