I grew up in the 50’s and yes, my brothers’ and my behavior occasionally brought out the belt. However, it was not for a first warning offense. When we were particularly hellish, we were given numerous warnings to knock it off. After several of these went by unheeded and lesser punishments proved ineffective, the belt warning would be given. This usually just paused our misbehavior, as we reassessed if the fun we were having was worth the punishment threatened. Sometimes the belt did come out, but not that often.
Having 3 brothers share a bedroom is not ideal for being quiet and going to sleep. After several warnings of “I’m going to come in there with the belt if you don’t shut up and go to sleep”, eventually the belt had to come in as promised. My older brother and I had a trick where we could pull the covers tight enough so the belt wouldn’t really hit us. We’d fake the pain and protest about how much it hurt. Unfortunately our younger brother couldn’t yet pull the covers tight enough. He couldn’t hold back laughing at our faking long enough for our father to leave the room. Not an endearing quality to a father who had to get up at 4:30 every morning.
But as has been stated, they were much different times. I’d have to say corporal punishment was the norm in our neighborhood.
To perhaps put it in context, how many parents today would let their toddler stand and climb around on the front seat of their car just a few feet away from a steel dashboard and windows not made with safety glass. Sounds like child abuse.
Good points, Astro. Getting on with life is what I did. I had a successful career, retired very young, but then have spent the past three years mucking about with nothing meaningful to do and spending my time instead on silly extreme pursuits. No kids. No wife.
I haven’t dwelled on this issue, really, but a therapist friend is convinced my treatment constituted “abuse,” and says this explains my flashes of anger. (Nope, I don’t drink/drug.) The blame game doesn’t appeal much to me, but understanding what happened–and why–is something I’ve been trying to understand. Ultimately, I suppose he did it because HIS father beat him, according to my uncle. Sad, but before my father died, he would always boast to people that he never so much as spanked us.
BTW, the beatings were severe. I remember that, after them, I would uncontrollably shake for some time, as the pain was intense. Funny, but we kids were straight arrows.
The OP sounds pretty excessive, yuck.
My mom was the primary disciplinarian, so of course we never took her seriously. However, when my dad [b[raised his voice**, we were gone. I have no idea what would have come after that, we never stuck around to find out.
I can remember my dad spanking my brother ONCE, and he was in his teens. He said something mouthy that just struck my dad the absolute worng way, and bro got a backhand to the upper thigh. He was more scared and angry than hurt. I probably got spanked a few times, but I was a hellcat and probably deserved it.
I have resisted the urge to spank my son, believing that he is too young for it. When he can see the cause and effect relationship, it might be effective but I’ll have to see about that later.
Yes, belt, hairbrush, flyswatter, switch, hanger, shoe, track from a hot wheels set, smacked and hair pulled, remember hand prints on my legs and face, welts and bruises on my rear and legs as well on occassion. For the most part I remember it for things like letting the screen door slam or one time when I was reading and a brother yanked my hair as he walked by and I screamed. I got the beating. On rare occassions I knew what I had done and thought I had “caused” it. I also remember “causing” it by lying because I was afraid to tell the truth about relatively small things, like “Who ate the leftover pudding?” Also for breaking a dish when cleaning the kitchen, not being able to find my shoes and making everyone late or sometimes because I didn’t 'prevent" the younger kids from misbehaving. I was in the middle, 14 months older than the next and 6 years younger than the oldest who was often the instigator.
Oh boy, I just remembered something else. One time I was made to go clean house for a neighbor because they had complained about my screams. So as I scrubbed this neighbors bathroom I was verbally berated by the neighbor for being “a screaming idiot” and keeping him awake when he was trying to sleep or nap. Ugh.
My boys were never beaten. The older one had a thing about sticking stuff in light sockets that didn’t stop until I spanked him. Hubby said just keep saying no and he’ll eventually get shocked, but I was scared it would hurt him worse than a spanking. So I spanked him several times on the bottom, he was about training pants age, I can’t imagine it hurt very much as I was so reluctant to do it in the first place. He’s a young teen now and says he doesn’t remember ever being spanked. For everything else extra hugs, a rest, time out, taking away the toy or giving them a snack seemed to remedy any behavior problem. I would tell them no and then try to distract them into something else. Sure seemed to work at our house. As he gets older, natural consequences and removal of priveledges is very effective.
Mr. Bobkitty (born in '59) was pretty regularly disciplined by anything that was handy, though the picking-your-own-switch thing came into play often. His mom was the psycho in the relationship, and would take out her frustration on Mr. Bobkitty for the most insignificant of reasons- for example, when some-and-so was sleeping with so-and-so on her favorite soap opera and she thought they shouldn’t be. I was spanked once by each parent as a child ('73 baby)- Dad with his hand, Mom with a brush- but the main form of punishment in the Bobkitty household was guilt.
Mr. Bobkitty used physical punishment on his kids, something that I really didn’t understand because I equated it with a situation like the OP- loss of control, anger, etc. Until I saw him actually use it… then I was completely in his camp. He plays 20 questions- what did you do wrong, why did you do it, what could you have done differently- to make sure the kid understands EXACTLY why this is happening, then administers the punishment quickly and calmly. I’ll never forget when he had to spank his son for stealing cigarettes from the local store and smoking at age 11. Mr. Bobkitty left his son outside ‘holding up the apple tree,’ walked into the house like it was any other day and wandered into the other room, all the while greeting me, asking how my day was, what was for supper, etc., then walked back past me with a belt and an ‘I’ll be right back.’ Son got 6 hits with the belt, and a pretty stern lecture that I could hear all the way in the house (Mr. Bobkitty has a very low, deep voice and it carries especially well when he’s making a point). It included the phrase that to this day makes me giggle- “You wanna be a Marlboro Man, boy?”
Back to the OP- yes, your experience was excessive, and would be considered abuse by today’s standard, but it certainly isn’t unusual for the time frame. Or, I would hazard to guess, the geographical area you were raised in.
-BK
Never anything but an open hand in our family. But I knew kids who got the belt, and they didn’t think it was odd. I’m sure now it would be considered more extreme.
I’ve really wondered about this issue myself. I’m a 37 year old female and I was whipped numerous times as a kid, almost exclusively by my father. He usually used a belt but sometimes a switch (I despise forsythia bushes). I can remember going to grade school with visible marks on my legs but no one ever said a thing. Different times I guess.
Mom would spank us with her hand or a shoe but I didn’t usually feel it was done in anger as much as when dad did it. She also used other punishments besides corporal ones as well, depending on the kid. Dad only had one mode-angry with a belt. Whippings like I got sometimes and like you describe are a bit on the extreme side I think.
Out of all the issues I have with him though I have to say that the whippings are a minor thing. Physical hurts heal a whole lot faster than emotional ones I’ve found.
I was born in '72 but my parents were 37 and 43 when I was born, and had most of their kids in the '50s and '60s, so I probably count.
I never got spanked with a belt by my parents, but a few times with a brush or a safety paddle (the thing you push wood through a tablesaw with). It was always when I did something that was very dangerous to myself or others, smarting off or being otherwise disobediant got me sent to my room or spanked by hand. I was struck in the face once by my father, when I was 10, for riding my nephew’s dirt-bike after he had specifically told me to stay away from it.
My older siblings were generally harsher with my nephews and niece (who were all within 7 years of me) than my parents were with me, but they all married people from a very small and backwards town in Oklahoma. They got spanked with belts or switches by their father for major infractions when he got home, and by hand by their mothers during the day. I don’t recall their fathers every spanking them in anger, it was usually after they had been sent to their room to await their punishment for about 30 minutes and after an explanation as to why they were being punished. In the case of spankings with switches, which was done by only one of my brothers-in-law, the boys were sent out to pick the switch they were going to be spanked with, and they were never hit hard enough to leave a bruise or lasting mark - in fact, my nephews learned that they could get a lighter spanking if they picked a thick and evil-looking switch. I recall my sister slapping my niece in the face a few times for cursing at her.
I don’t see any of it as child abuse, as in most cases the punishment was carefully measured out and not done in anger. I’ve noticed that face-slapping is usually something done by mothers to daughters. My wife says the first time she cursed at her mother she got smacked so hard she was knocked to the floor, and afterwards her mother told her that her mother did the same thing to her. My wife feels that it’s important that the first time your child does that you make a big impression that you are supposed to show a certain degree of respect no matter how angry you might be at your mother. I’ve heard similar things from other women about mothers who generally were pretty easy on the corporal punishment slapping the heck out of their daughters in situations like that and wonder if this is a wide-spread thing.
I don’t think it’s ever a normal thing to beat someone. No one deserves to be beat. Okay, there are a select few evil people that the world has encountered, such as Hitler and other very evil people that deserve a really good beating, or stoning, but otherwise, it is cruel to hit a child or anyone. I was not treated like this ever when I was growing up, and neither was my mother, so no, I don’t think it was a time period thing. Your father sounds like someone that had a lot of pent up rage or anger.
Your family was the reverse of mine, sailor. In my family (a) my brother could do anything and get away with it because he was a boy and (b) when we kids were left alone and invariably got into fights, when our parents returned I was the one in trouble. Funny, isn’t it?
I had the same mentality when helping to raise my second, much-younger brother. I only ever smacked him twice - once when he was approaching an electric socket with the intention of putting his finger in it. Like you, I decided that I’d rather smack him than have him be electrocuted. 
He was wearing a nappy so I doubt it hurt him much, but it startled him sufficiently to keep him away. I think it’s all right to smack children when you want to dissuade them from dangerous behaviour but they are too young to understand verbal admonishment.
I agree with others who have said that while the beating might not be excessive for the time period, the ferocity of it was.
I was born in '64 and got ‘the belt’ every once in awhile–always from my dad, and usually the anticipation was worse than the actual punishment. It was fairly rare, though, as I wasn’t a troublemaker kid and my parents didn’t really want to spank me, so it only happened when I really got out of line. My mother spanked me with her hand more often–once she tried using a paddle but I put my hand behind me to block it and she smacked me hard on the arm, raising a welt. That upset her–she told me years later she felt awful about it. It was hands only after that.
I must say this thread makes me feel better about getting spanked with a belt–I was starting to feel a little like it was out of line, but it sounds like it was pretty common for that time period.
Yep, I know a guy who got it like that.
What’s more interesting for me is to ask your folks today if they remember doing that to you. Most say ‘no’. they can be tricked to saying they did if you are excellent with words.