Ill answer this for Vickie,
Yes you can ‘hit’ a person playfully and not hurt them, but to ‘hit’ a person to teach them a lesson, this is a different kettle of fish.
To actually think a person would ‘hit’ a person to dicipline them, and ‘hit’ them without any force, is quite illogical. If you have a husband and his wife kept disobeying him and it came to the time that he had no alternative but to ‘hit’ her, do you think he would be pretty annoyed with his wife by this stage and have anger dwelling inside of him? Have you seen a person hit a person out of anger? Do you think a person that has anger in them would be in a logical frame of mind to say ‘ok honey, im going to have to hit you, but i promise it wont hurt’
If you hit a person without any force, they would laugh at you and tell you to stop treating them with such disrespect.
The only way a husband would get through to his wife after trying to dicipline her in other ways, wouldnt be with a light ‘touch’ as you claim, it would be more like an actual ‘hit’ to get the message across not to do it again.
I know for my own personal experience, if a person hits me softly, i just brush it off, but, when you get hit hard (i trained in karate for years) you quickly get the message.