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Between the World and Me,
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Colleen
It's an old notion that it will teach them to act in line, respecting authority and instilling a level of fear, which is supposed to keep them safe.
Pramila
It shows helplessness arising from the intense desire to protect in a situation where no protection is available outside of the family.
Karen Andrews
Another aspect of this is that parents believed that their children would likely encounter beatings as they grew up, so getting beaten by a parent first would harden them, teach them that they could survive a beating. It was a method for desensitizing a child to what may come later. It also was meant to instill a fear of wandering away from a parent, which could leave them vulnerable to an attack or kidnapping by a stranger.
Karen M.
Coates mentions this in the book. If I recall correctly, he relates it to the fear of losing children to street violence, and a sense of wanting to control what little they can in raising their children. There is a passage in the book where he describes a parent as saying they would rather beat their child themselves than let their child be hurt by a passing car. Read the book for more detail.
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