Am I too Hard on my kids?

Discipline vs. Punishments

One thing I recall as child was my mother's punishments. She was a believer of corporal punishment and would use it when deemed necessary. The memories of picking my own switch or switches to teach me right from wrong still leaves me squirming as I write this. The sounds of your heart beating in your ear and the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach while selecting the tool of the trade. If you got one to little she will try it on you and make you get another one, get one to big and you would hurt yourself. So you finally learned how to pick a switch-the right size after trail and error. I got to the point of not caring about a switching as much as I got older and come to despise her other form of punishment as she called it-The removal. She would take something from you and would state, "You will get this back when I'm good and ready". Which translated to you would NEVER get it back. Now I don't want people to think my mom was a like the mother from the movie "Mommy Dearest" or like the mom from "Carrie." not by any means, she just used several techniques of child rearing that fell in the category of impropriate punishment. I never felt that I was abused by her nor that she did not love me dearly, which I know she does; however, I have learned that the old way of doing things is exactly that the old way. Children need to be taught (discipline) not beat (punishment) into productive citizens. What do you think? Is their a proper place for punishment? Do the pressures of society force parents to choose improper parenting techniques? Or even to be scared to discipline their children at all?