An old TV episode

Yes, this was on the air in the 80s. "Give Me a Break" was a sitcom about how a black housekeeper stepped in to help a (semi racist) man raise his daughter after the death of his wife.

It included an episode titled "Give Me a Break: Katie the Cheat", where the oldest sister needed "help" on her SAT scored. Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1u2qu5RXHQ and fast forward to 18:40 and you'll see a near spanking on a sitcom.

There was another one like that in the same show, where the father threatened the younger girl with the spanking of her life after she made an unkind comment about the housekeeper. I also remember Father Dear Father (a British sitcom about a single father with two teenage daughters). One ran away from home and she got busted, she was talking to her father on the phone and didn't realise that he was in the next room, when she knew she was beyond the point of no return she asked 'Sixteen isn't too old to get an old fashioned spanking, is it?'
Her father's ominous answer was, 'No.'

There were 2 other 1980's sitcoms, which referenced spankings on a regular basis. Different Strokes and another one called What's Happening. Both would make spanking references or beltings on a regular basis either from the Mom or an older sibling

Different Strokes early on did actually show Arnold being spanked by Willis.

There was one on an episode of "One Day at a Time" that I remember where Bonnie Franklin was preparing to swat a young Ralph Macchio's butt with a paddle/cutting board and it cut off right at the moment of impact (at the end of the episode). No actual spanking but...

Isn't it funny that the shows mentioned ( plus you can toss in Danny Bonaduce in an episode of Partridge Family ) all showed spanked child actors who all grew up to have major problems? ( Not sure about Macchio though. ) I guess spanking really IS bad for kids!

Was Danny ever actually spanked in the show? I know Shirley Jones said that she got so exasperated with the actor that she ordered him to his room on set, and he just looked at her and said 'You do know that this is a set and there's nothing behind that door, right?'

Seegee: I could be wrong but my feeble brain seems to recall an episode where he did in fact get paddled by his mom.

One of the counters to that is Sally Field, she got an onscreen spanking from her sister and brother-in-law at the end of a Gidget episode and seemed to turn out okay. It's still one of my favourite onscreen spankings, too.

I think it far more likely that the show-biz meat grinder is responsible for so many child actors winding up dysfunctional in later life (the child being the "breadwinner" for the rest of his family and his parents getting a piece of the action as his agent or whatever, plus being the trustees of his "Jackie Coogan" mandatory trust fund and spending the money on themselves and the rest of the family). It's a pretty cutthroat business and once you get a little older or cease being cute enough, jobs are few a far between for a lot of young actors.

It's known that Bonaduce had a horrible personal life (his father physically abused him, among other things) and that may be the cause of his adult problems. Drugs and fast living take their toll too. When you have "all the friends that money can buy" and you run out of money, you also run out of friends. Of course there are numerous examples of child stars going on to great success both in and out of show business (Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Ron Howard, Jodie Foster and, currently, Scarlett Johannsen and Natalie Portman, among others) so it's not always a done deal. It's a matter of record that Shirley Temple's mother actually spanked her on set when she was a little girl and she turned out fine, I daresay. I think it's up to their parents to decide how to raise them and if spanking is a part of their upbringing, well, so be it. The subject of whether children should be spanked, at what age and with what is very polarizing, even here, so I won't get into that debate at this time. Kids who are "spanked" on screen (or with the spanking implied) are actors playing a role and it has nothing to do with their personal lives. And, for the record, I don't think Danny Bonaduce was spanked/paddled on "The Partridge Family", but I seem to remember there was talk of it having happened on the show, so it would have been offscreen. I have a short clip of that "Gidget" one too. It's more of a good-natured smacking of Sally's backside while bent over a couch but she was pretty cute back then and I think that scene was very popular. It certainly was for me...