My mom slapped me across the face once. I was trying a new joke I had just learned at school - “Hey Mom, Why don’t you just shut the hel…(smack)…icopter door?” Yes, she slapped me in the pause between hell and icopter. I should have done it from across the room. It’s pretty funny in retrospect, but I was really upset at the time.
My father’s temper was notorious; there were even some relative who we never saw, because they didn’t want their children exposed to him. He would fly off the handle with minimal provocation, and when you saw him taking off his belt you knew you’d have welts on your back. And once, when I was 6 or 7, he beat the crap out of me for an extremely minor offense.
I was always kind of amazed that other kids, like the ones on TV, received “civilized” punishments like spankings over the knee.
Once, when I was about 13, he hit me for some reason, and for the first time I shoved him back. That was the last time he ever laid a finger on me. Yeah, I wish I had thought of that sooner.
But as bad as his temper was, his emotional abuse was worse . . . and lasted longer.
Mind you, my father also had many wonderful qualities, which I didn’t begin to realize until I was well into my 20s.
I got spanked as a child, never hit.
I misunderstood as well. I have no recollection of my parents smacking either of us in any way, and I do not have children.
That said, I have seen such a thing once or twice, but it’s very rare and in all instances the parents regretted it utterly. This is different than what I have heard about. I know some of my friends experienced abuse as children, but I never witnessed it.
It is what it is, and I’m not looking for pity. But the idea that child abuse is confined to the poor and uneducated infuriates me. And I find that when I say “I was abused” but don’t give details, people assume that I am whining about the occasional spanking–because people assume there’s no way folks like my parents did anything worse.
Dad was a successful investment banker, and Mom is a librarian with the reputation of being the nicest woman around.
Apologies to my lack of precision. I didn’t know how long the question could be, but I thought the word “party” was sufficient. And I thought my post made pretty clear what I was asking about. I’ve heard a large number of guys I know comment that their dad “cracked them” or said such-and-such would have earned them a crack. I’m sure that is not universal, but it surprised me when so many folk posted in the other thread as tho they had never heard of such a thing, couldn’t conceive of it, and would call coops over it.
90wt’s situation would count IMO, because I was mainly asking about the percentage of households where this type of thing happened.
QN - your situation sounds horrible. Perhaps I should have included a separate category for “all the time” or “in an abusive manner” or something.
If folk are so inclined I’d welcome their thoughts as to whether they think even occasional striking constitutes abuse, and whether cops should be called?
Hit often, half the time in anger.
The other half was usually unbridled glee.
The situation in the thread referenced isn’t at all what the OP is asking. In that thread, they’re talking about teenage boys and their fathers and whether or not it’s normal for physical violence to occur there. Not at all talking about spanking a toddler.
No one in my family (white upper-middle class) spanks or hits. It’s just one of those Things Not Done. I’ve never been hit by my parents nor did I ever feel that they were even close to hitting me, no matter how angry they got. And both my brother and I pushed their buttons, but that generally just resulted in a lot of yelling. Both us kids are pretty sensitive and harsh rebukes worked well. My dad does have a frightening temper if you go too far, but he either hits or throws things at the wall, not people, and as we grew older we learned where the line was and not to cross it. I can’t even fathom him hitting me or my brother.
My cousins weren’t spanked, either, and AFAIK my grandparents also didn’t hit my parents. Like I said, it’s just not done in my family.
Corporal punishment was rare in our house (though it worked!), and being hit out of anger was even more rare. I can only clearly remember my mom slapping me once, though I feel like it happened another time, too. She was more upset about it than I was. I don’t have kids.
I was strung up by my wrists and whipped with belts and choked regularly.
I think because of my own abuse, my view of spanking is skewed so I only see it as abuse.
My father hit me in anger exactly once. I was eight.
I know victims need to be disabused of the notion that they deserve abuse. But, darn. In this case I am neither surprised nor particularly resentful that he blew up.
In the day, most of us children who came from “respectable” homes were spanked to discipline us. It wasn’t even questioned as a form of discipline that I’m aware of. Call it a cultural inclination if you like.
With Mom it was nearly ceremonial - cold, calculated ritual. But this time with Dad it was all wounded dignity and instant rage.
I cried, of course, although what really hurt was my confusion that someone could say they love you and then hit you. And in front of your friends, besides!
I don’t remember feeling confused about Mom’s spankings. I got that part. But with Dad it was a whole different experience because of the anger I saw on his face. Pretty scary.
When I had my own children I started out disciplining them with spankings but it didn’t take long before I realized that I just didn’t have the heart to strike my children and I learned some other techniques, non-corporal, for reinforcing appropriate behavior.
There was one time, though, when I came close to seriously harming my son. And if you ask me at that time in my life and that point of my development he definitely did deserve it! The lie that out-of-control people tell themselves.
I caught myself and told him to run straight to his room and close his door or I thought I may hurt him. He didn’t question me about it and I know I must have looked fearsome.
I truly do understand a parent harming a child in anger and I can see how it could happen and be more serious than ever intended. No one can push a parent’s buttons better than a child or their own parents.
The thing with Dad? I carried some hurt about it (even though I had provoked it) for decades and just before he died I had a chance to broach the subject. He was a sensitive man and I put it like so: We got along pretty good, Dad. I only remember you hitting me once.
Apparently he hadn’t remembered the situation. His face fell and I wondered if I shouldn’t have brought it up this late in our lives.
And then he said, ever so sweetly, “Oh Kite. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
All better now. 
Absolutely never. We argued about anything and everything and no doubt I had a spectacular attitude as a kid, but there was never anything physical. That would have crossed a truly sacred boundary. I think if my father hit me once (or vice versa) it would have seriously altered our family dynamic. I learned from a pretty young age that in general, no matter how I might feel, there were certain things that you just Do Not Do. Hitting someone else in anger is one of them.
I was hit fairly regularly as a small child until one incident when I was 10ish. My mother stared noticing that her carton of cigarettes was disappearing faster than she was smoking them (and that was a trick!). She and Dad were convinced it was me, and my punishment got progressively worse for “lying”. By the time I confessed I had bruises across the backs of both legs, all the way up to the middle of my back. A week later they discovered my brother and his friend smoking and dumping the butts in the gas tank of an old car that was waiting for Dad to repair it. He was grounded for what seemed like a decade and I got everything I wanted for several weeks. This was the last time they hit either of us.
My step father was an abusive drunk. We moved to California from MI when I was 13 when it became apparent to my Mom that the day was fast approaching where one of us was going to prison or a funeral. The whole story is posted here somewhere. My Mom pretty much never hit us, though I do remember her slapping my older brother for lying, repeatedly. However since I mentioned in the other thread sort of being a party to it, I’ll mention the two of the most recent incidents.
My oldest child still in the home (19) has two friends who we will call Malcolm and Martin. Malcolm lives with his Mom and stepdad, who’s raised him since, well as far as I know he’s the only Dad Malcolm knows. Malcolm is a good kid but a kind of a slacker. As I recall their big beef was over cleaning the garage over spring break last year. The long and short of it was that they both took a swing, neither doing any damage other than hurt feelings. He came to my house really upset, ready to run away, he was never going t speak to “that asshole is not my father”, blah, blah… I called his home; let his mother know he would be spending the night. They were fine the next day.
Martin was different. I noticed that he was the last to leave my house for a week or so. I’ve spent enough time with teens to recognize when someone doesn’t want to go home. Turns out his family went through a foreclosure and his dad was drinking too much and raging. While Martin never claimed he’d been hit, after talking with father we decided he could stay with us for a few days. They’ve since moved to the south somewhere.
The last was my nephew. I’ve mentioned before that I have a sister who is also an alcoholic who constantly drinks and drives. She’s also a mean drunk. Shortly before X-Mas; she and a friend returned from a night of clubbing drunk at something like 7 am. My BIL maybe over reacted and engaged in a screaming match on their front lawn. My nephew (not the BILs bio-kid) decided to take up for his mother by sucker punching BIL*. He (the nephew) was arrested, and his Juvenile Court judge ruled it was unsafe to send him home. He was placed in my custody for the first 4 months of this year. As you can imagine, the family is now split into two factions, those pissed at my BIL for calling the cops, and those pissed at my Sis. Oddly almost know one other than my Sis is mad at the nephew.
*BIL characterization. The nephew claims BIL was dragging Sis out the car, when it happened, Sis claims she doesn’t remember the incident at all.
My mom spanked, slapped, hit, dragged, etc a ton, so more than occasionally. She crossed the line from discipline to abuse many times IMO.
I’m glad physical discipline or just lashing out physically against kids in anger is less accepted nowadays, and don’t plan on using it with my future children. It can be effective, and done properly (not in anger or with emotional abuse/manipulation) I don’t think it’s actively harmful - but I believe in treating other people how I want to be treated. And it wouldn’t be right for anyone to hurt me to teach me things, even if it worked.
I grew up in a very violent home, but never hit or spanked any of my kids.
I never needed to, they were far from perfect but I don’t think hitting another person ever resolves anything. We had a zero tolerance policy for violence in our home so they weren’t allowed to hit each other either.
They’re adults now, so I managed to get through the challenges of parenting without hitting any of them.
Me too, except my mom owns up to it.
Other than that I was only spanked a couple of times.
Spankings from my mother were quite controlled… along the lines of “You behaved badly, this is your punishment.”
My father was usually not the one to “discipline” me, but when he did doled out physical pain, half of it was because he was angry, a quarter because he was bored and wanted to see me cry, and the other quarter was because my mother was really upset about something I did and told him to give me the spankings. I do not have a close relationship with him at all, but this is just one of the many reasons why. On this topic, though, I vividly remember one time we were having dinner and I repeated some comment that my grandmother had said and it offended him, so he reached across the table and gave me a few hard raps on the head with his knuckles while saying “You stupid worthless girl. If you were a boy, you wouldn’t gossip so much.” I cried (of course), and my mother sent me to my room. A few hours later, I’d calmed down and came out to watch some tv and I whined to my mom about how my head hurt and she checked and confirmed that there were a few bumps on my head. My father laughed and said “Of course she does, girls don’t have hard heads, and if they do, you have to knock it out of them.”
Oh, and he was also one to say “If you report anything to child services, they’ll take you away and you’ll never see us again. No warm house for you, no tv, no toys, and no parents to take care of you unconditionally even though you’re a worthless girl.”
Funny thing is, I don’t look back on these things and see it as abuse. He was very harsh in his treatment with me, both physically and verbally, but I never got any actual beatings to the point where I’d limp around for weeks. I mean, back then, he knew the dynamics were that he was the adult, and I was the kid. He wanted me to understand who was in power and who was in control. What he failed to see was that I would grow up and distance myself from him and that’s just too bad for him. He is fully aware that my happiness does not stem from his constant reiteration that I’m “worthless”.
I wasn’t abused, but I’m not clear on what a spanking is vs. being hit in anger. Mum used to lose her temper a lot and hit me. Never slapped me across the face or anything like that, but she’d slap me across the upper leg mostly. I know she hit me so hard once that she burst a blood vein in her hand and had a massive bruise for a week or more but I don’t remember her actually hurting me - I remember that incident mostly because I was so upset that I copped a belting for something my brother did, and then because Mum hurt herself hitting me.