Charles Barkley urges parents to spank their children: ‘I believe in discipline’

Charles Barkley believes NBA players and college athletes can’t handle being yelled at by their coaches because they weren’t spanked enough as children.

Give Charles Barkley the space to rant, and he will undoubtedly say something to surprise you. Barkley joined The Dan Patrick Show Monday morning to discuss the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. But instead of learning about the NCAA Tournament, we learned about Barkley’s parenting style.

Patrick asked a question about Rick Pitino, which led to a question about Kenny Smith potentially being interested in the UNC job, which led to Barkley ranting about coaches not having enough power, and ultimately blaming that lack of power on parents not spanking their kids.

“People talking about you can’t yell at your kids. Yes, hell you can yell at your kids,” Barkley said. “You’ll whoop their ass too.”

Patrick quickly pushed back, saying he doesn’t think you can “whoop ass” anymore, to which Barkley doubled down by insisting, “yes, you can.” Barkley then proceeded to tell a story about getting a Hot Wheels track as a kid, and his grandmother using pieces of the track to spank him.

“I believe in discipline,” Barkley continued. “I’m not going around telling people to beat their kids, but I think if you don’t spank your kids and discipline them, they turn into some of these brats that we got today. I’m not here for child abuse, but how are kids gonna know they’re doing something wrong. First of all, you can’t rationalize with kids, they’re dumber than rocks. They don’t know they doing stuff wrong, but when you spank them, that gets the message across because they don’t want that.”

Perhaps sensing his opinions on parenting might not be deemed acceptable in the year 2026, Barkley refused to soften his stance on spanking, and noted he doesn’t care about any potential backlash that might come his way from this rant.

“You can blast me on social media,” Barkley said. “You guys know I don’t do social media. I don’t ever read any comments, I don’t care what you think, y’all can kiss my big Black ass, I’m gonna say what I gotta say. Some of y’all gonna like it and some of y’all not. And y’all will get over it.”

Patrick undoubtedly sat through the rant wondering how the interview turned from questions about Rick Pitino and Kenny Smith, into Barkley urging parents to make coach’s jobs easier by giving their kids ass-whoopings when they’re young.