Yes. I can’t watch that video.
I don’t think so. According to my mom, I was difficult the second I was born (she just corrected that to ‘you were difficult BEFORE you were born, but I don’t think that’s fair to hold against you’). I don’t have any real problems, except maybe laziness.
I think spanking was okay 20 years ago. It’s not okay now. Abusive parents won’t care one way or another. Spanking is not inherently abusive, as long as it causes no permanent damage, is done as punishment and not because the parent is angry, and is done in appropriate amounts. That said, there are other punishments, and I still don’t recommend it these days.
Yes, this.
I can’t answer the poll due to the fact that I’m on my phone, but I’d choose the often/turned out badly option.
I was “spanked” similarly to the girl in the video, just by my mom instead of my dad. A belt and a switch, on a unclothed butt (sometimes upper legs), was usually the norm. In addition, I was pinched regularly and was slapped at least twice that I remember. Few of these things were ever deserved, as I was a good (never drank, smoked, did drugs, didn’t lose my virginity until 24, etc.) kid, albeit absolutely continually terrified.
The last whuppin’ I got was when I was 13. My mother threatened though, until I moved out at 20. She was also extremely emotionally abusive and did things like promise to abandon me to an orphan’s home when I was little.
I’m 43 now and have had mental problems since I had my first nervous breakdown at 28. I don’t ever want to disappoint people, so I rarely stand up for myself. All my relationships are co-dependent. I don’t function to well in general and I attribute most of that to my mother’s poor parenting and abuse.
Finally, I’m another one who chose not to have children. Not so much because I was afraid of perpetuating the cycle, but instead because I feared not being strong enough to oppose my mother and any harm she might try to inflict upon my hypothetical children. I just couldn’t take that chance.
Oh, and further, my mother was indeed out-of-control angry anytime she hit me. There was no reasoned response, ever.
I doubt she ever reacted that way because she wanted to help me grow up into a contributing member of society, but because she didn’t want any negative opinions of her regarding her should-be compliant daughter.
Heaven forbid if she wasn’t seen as the strict disciplinarian who by God took no guff.
No.
Worst event I can remember from my childhood was that time I was flung bodily into a cold bathtub*, clothes and all because for some reason or another, I didn’t want to take the bath my mum had poured for me earlier.
I’m pretty sure I must have been a cunt that day, because neither of my parents have ever done anything like this before, or since. Their sin was absenteeism, not overdoingitism.
- Not cold “filled with ice cubes and we ran the cold faucet” cold , mind you. Cold “this bath was warm 4 hours ago, but it’s autumn and the window is open” cold.
I picked “rarely” but honest to goodness I don’t remember if I was spanked (swatted with a open hand on the tush) or if it’s more that I remember it as a possibility. It seems like it could have happened, but I don’t recall a particular incident. I remember my brother getting spanked a handful of times (fewer than 10), he was the kind of kid who couldn’t remember to adjust his behavior to not touch the hot stove, not run out into the street, etc, without the stark reinforcement of a spanking. It was always after other methods didn’t get results, and certainly stopped by age 5 or so.
Both of us turned out quite well, thanks for asking.
It makes logical sense that families with a genetic tendency toward mental illness will have an above-average rate of child neglect and abuse. I thank God every day for modern pharmacology, it’s probably doing more to stop abuse cycles than anything else.
I’m curious - is there anyone here who was spanked lightly, infrequently, by a calm parent and when they earned it who feels that it did them more harm than good? So far there seems to be a very clear distinction in this thread between spanking that fits the above description and inappropriate punishment.
my worst experience was with my peers and sibblings. i answered the last two (not really sure if i’m well or bad.) i’ve forgiven my parents but not my sibblings.
Yes. Often enough. I turned out quite well in many ways. But I’ve never been quite right.
I’m so sorry to hear about all the pain the survivors of abuse have gone through. 
I don’t think all hitting is abuse, per se, but certainly many of the posts on here describe abuse.
I wasn’t hit by my mother. May have been by my father, but they divorced very early. I have a good relationship with my mom and I am happy to say that even in the roughest times I’ve been able to give myself a time-out from parenting my own kids so it didn’t get to that. I think it was in part due to the fact that I knew how hard it was for my mom and how she managed to respect our basic human rights through it all.
We are all, my cousins and sibling, productive members of society, in spite of the fact that we are working-class and middle-class (no privilege to break the law here), mostly not white, and not spanked or hit.
I got spanked as a kid, but not that often. I was mostly a goody two shoes and didn’t often break rules. When I did get spanked it was almost always with open hand to clothed butt. The exceptions were the small number of times I “got the belt” (always from my dad, always on clothed butt) but those were only for the worst infractions. My mom tried to hit me with a paddle once, but I put my arm back to block it and got a big bruise on it, which made her feel so bad she never used it again.
I turned out fine.
This. It was more than rarely, less than often. And for the most part, there was an age drop off point. My parents were big on {{{{shudder}}}}} the (gasp!) lecture instead. I don’t remember either of us getting spanked at all past the age of 10. And only for certain infractions, usually fighting with each other, or doing something we knew DARNED well would end badly (angrily pounding on opposite sides of a flimsy camper window while having a bitchfest got us BOTH a blistering :D).
There were rules to spankings. It was usually 3-5 smacks. Any weapon in sight for mom (wooden spoon, race car track), and for dad? It was “the belt” or a switch we had to go pick ourselves.
There was NO beating. This was a fair swat across the soft tissue of the buttocks and lower thighs. As I said, we’d secretly hope for a spanking. My dad was a great orator, he could go on for HOURS and have you confessing to the Kennedy assassination, who ate the last banana, where Hoffa is buried…etc. They all started the same…Now you girls need to get a good education, education is the fundamental tool in life (dad thought that unless you graduated from Harvard with a perfect gpa, you were destined to sell fries and marry the garbage man :D)
We used to tease him “no daddy no, please just beat us like other dads”.
I was hit with a wooden spoon on a bare bottom by my step-mother when I was between the age of 6 and 9. Let’s see…it was for reasons like not finishing my food, getting less than an excellent grade on a test, not cleaning my room to her expectations. You know, fucked up reasons like that. She is the only adult that hit me when I was kid. My dad left her when I was nine and I went to live with my aunt and grandmother in Perú for a year while he got his life back in order. I’m not bitter (anymore) because despite of this and other things that I experienced as a kid, I turned out to be a pretty level headed adult, a good parent, friend and giving partner. I must say though, that wooden spoons are not my favorite kitchen tools to look at. I remember changing for gym one day and my friend asking me what the oval shaped bruises were on my bottom. “I fell down,” was my answer, of course.
I got spanked fairly often with a belt, at or above the level in that video. Since I was the oldest and the rule was that if anyone screwed up, everyone (3 siblings) would get it, I got the first round.
IMO the key to coming out of it ok is figuring out why the parent(s) do it. Once you realize at 12 you’re more mature and reasoned than they are, it’s just something you grit your teeth through and move on.
I’ve never been married (50 something now) and all my siblings have gone through bad marriages.
We can even laugh about the times we were punished by being tied up with clothesline and having our mouths taped shut.
Corporal punishment is just about the most idiotic discipline method in the vast majority of cases I can think of.
Voted “Often, and I turned out quite well”. Myself and or one of my step brothers would get the belt every singe day. With a warning, so that the old man had time for a brewski or two before he’d march us down to the basement. Cant tell you all how many times I lost control of my bladder and pissed all over myself while getting that fucking belt from head to toe.
I was spanked with a paddle. I think I turned out okay, but I also think I would have turned out at least as okay without the spankings. Therefore I didn’t answer the poll.
I remember some of the spankings. I can’t remember a single thing I was spanked for.
My parents used corporal punishment but never in excess, although my brother told me that Dad slapped him a few times when no one else was home. I was never hit across the face. Usually we were hit with a stick on our palms or the backs of our legs. No lasting damage done.
I endures far more severe punishment at school in Korea, but so did everyone else.
Nor I. As I said upthread, my brother was the one who got beatings, not me. I was the one who vomited just from having to listen to it.
I was paddled in school, and paddled again for the offense at home, paddled with a paddle in both cases. I love my dad and he never did it out of control, he was softer on my ass than the principal.
My mother beat the crap out of me. Her favorite punishment was stomping on my feet. All the bones in my toes have been broken many times, and never have been set. I have very ugly feet.
She told people the bruises came because “I was so clumsy.” Since people saw I walked funny, they believed her.
I abhor violence and do not trust people.