Yes. Spanking and the belt. My sis and I were born in the 80’s and I think the last time I was punished as such was when I was 10. It only happened a few times when we knew we deserved it.
I can’t believe I’m going to write this. It’s something I’ve only shared with a handful of people in my life - basically my wife and 2 friends. I don’t tend to act like a keyboard warrior behind the anonymity of the internet, and don’t really type stuff I wouldn’t say in person, but it looks like I will here.
For context, I was born in 1972, the eldest of 3 sons.
My father was a strict disciplinarian and I was beaten pretty frequently. I was whipped with a belt from the age of 8 onward for pretty much any transgression. There was not a lot of proportionality in my punishment.
The “belt job” as it was called in our house was administered to the bare ass while lying across the bed. As someone above said, one it supposed to sit still and get it over with, but sometimes I would panic and try to get away and make him mad(der) and make things worse. When that happened, it was pretty much anything goes in terms of what I might get hit with. I don’t want to get too into that. It was definitely child abuse, even by the standards of the day.
A typical belt job would require about 2 weeks for the bruising to go away.
I don’t know why, maybe it was who I was, or how I was, but somehow, I always rubbed my father the wrong way. My 2 brothers received only a fraction of the punishments that I did. I’d say of all the punishment administered in the family, I got 85% of it.
One time I got it twice in 3 days. I’d been suspended from a class in school for speaking out and being disruptive, and I got a bad beating that night when I got home. My father also told me I needed to seek out the teacher and apologize.
I was nervous and embarrassed to approach her and failed to find a quiet moment when I could catch her alone for 2 days. On the evening of the 3rd day, my dad asked me if I’d apologized and I panicked and lied and said yes, which he saw through and predicated the 2nd of the beatings.
This was the beating that made me panic and resist the most. After 1 or 2 lashes, I panicked and sat up and begged him to stop and he continued whipping, regardless of my position. I took a lot across my arms and one in particular wrapped around my defensively raised wrist and hit me across the face and one eye. That was the worst, and last, beating I ever received. I remember tracking my bruises, which were not limited to my butt, and it took 6 weeks to heal. They were the deep bruises, the ones that turn every colour as they go away from an angry almost black purple to a sick green and yellow before finally vanishing.
I think after that, my father did some soul searching or got help with his anger issues or something. In any case, he never hit me again.
Doctors, nurses and dentists were and are always impressed at how still I can sit during uncomfortable procedures.
This has taken a long time to write. I’ve reread it a few times wondering if I should just delete it and go back to my day, but I guess I’ll let it fly. It’s been difficult to dredge up these details.
Thanks for sharing Marlonius, I’m sorry you went through that, and glad your father finally realized he had a problem and stopped. Did he ever apologize?
I did get spankings as a child. Usually mom would make us wait until dad got home and he doled them out. It was almost always on the hands with his hands. Mom spanked me with a wooden spoon on the bare ass a couple of times too, when the punishment couldn’t wait.
We don’t have kids, but I’m on the fence about spankings if we do eventually have them. As part of our homestudy for adoption (from the public system - i.e. foster children), we were very explicitly told that the Province of Alberta does not accept physical punishment of the kids. You have to agree to never physically punish any child you take in to your care from the province, either as a temporary foster child or as an adoptive child. I’m pretty sure this is common throughout Canada.
ETA: My first long term boyfriend when I was 13/14 was brought up in a family where punishment was abuse. I remember the first time I witnessed it. My boyfriend was not focusing on his homework and his dad got pissed at him. He got up from his easy chair and told him to come outside. One hard punch to the face and my boyfriend was on the ground. His dad told him to get up and get the f*ck in the house and do his homework.
We eventually broke up - I broke up with him. His reaction? He punched me in the head a couple of times. First and only time I’ve ever been hit by a man. Scared the shit out of me, and made me very thankful I decided to leave when I did. He has three or four kids now. I hope he stopped the violence.
That’s awful, Marlonius. I’m sorry that happened to you. What an awful position to put a child in.
I got spanked by my mom because my* brother* dumped out all his toys from the toy box. I got spanked by my mom because my brother drew on the bedroom wall with a crayon. I got the belt from my dad because my sister teased me until I cried and if I didn’t stop crying I was going to get something to cry about. This was when I was… eight? My dad chased me down the hall and I was terrified and trapped. I got the belt another time for crying because a sibling was mean to me. I don’t recall any of my siblings ever being spanked or getting the belt.
As a kid, I was spanked rarely, and only on the butt, with her hand, by my mom. My parents also preferred to take away dessert or send me to my room (which, as an introvert, wasn’t really a punishment). I was pretty easy-going as a kid.
As a teenager my mom started to think that if I went out with friends, I would immediately run amok. I was an honor student; it was a wild party if we each had one wine cooler while playing Trivial Pursuit. (In retrospect, I wonder WTH my mom did during HER teenage years that made her suspicious of me.)
When I hit my teen years, my mom became a fan of the face slap.
One day we had a real throwdown of a fight. I’d planned to go out and asked a friend of mine who wasn’t going to the party to baby-sit my brother. My friend said yes. My mom ran into my friend’s ***sister ***at the grocery store, and said she’d see her tonight. Of course my friend’s sister had no idea WTH she was talking about. So my mother assumed that I’d lied about getting a babysitter. I tried to explain that she had the wrong sister, but mom wasn’t listening, obviously I was a liar (I never lied).
I was angry that she thought I’d lie like that, and I told her she was being a bitch. She tried to slap me across the face. I was so furious that I blocked it and glared at her. I was the same height as her. I realized it and she did.
That was the last time she hit me.
Never did apologize about the mix-up, though. Or for accusing me of lying. That pissed me off most.
I moved in with my dad and stepmother at the end of that school year.
I am as well.
Even when in full tantrum mode, rather than spanking, I’ve put the kid in his/her room or ignored the tantrum (if we were at home alone). After being ignored, my nephew stopped throwing tantrums around me.
In fact, nearly every scenario I can think of for a spanking, can be effectively handled in a non-physical way. Maybe parents will have a different perspective.
The only exception didn’t involve a spanking. As a toddler, my nephew was reaching toward the open preheated oven, and I “slapped” (or quickly pushed with force?) his hand away and loudly said, “NO! HOT!” But it wasn’t to hurt him, it was to quickly move his hand from danger.
I was born in 1969, and the “punishments” provided by a lot of our parents would be considered abuse today. That said, the punishments my mom got from her dad would ***definitely ***be considered abuse (including a cracked vertebra).
Born in 1958, adopted in 1961. From then onward, spanked regularly, periodically whacked with a cane so hard that one time a piece chipped off, grabbed and shaken so hard I had bruises in the shape of my mother’s fingers imprinted on my upper arms, hit so hard with a hairbrush smacked on my head that I threw up blood afterwards.
I think my friends’ parents, who didn’t know the details but could sense how severe the physical (and emotional) punishments were, were uneasy with the severity. In particular, I recall one time when I was about 7 and visiting with a friend. My sandal broke at her house, and I burst into tears because I knew I’d be beaten for it. My friend’s mother sewed the sandal back together - not an easy task, I’m sure, as it was two pieces of leather that separated - and I was pathetically grateful to her.
Another time I was ill at school and begged the school nurse not to send me home, because my mother would be angry at me for being sick. The nurse was clearly taken aback, but let me stay at school instead of going home.
But other than those acts of kindness, no one ever said or did anything. I think it was a combination of the fact that severe physical punishments were more acceptable in the 196os and the fact that people just weren’t attuned to abusive behavior, and didn’t really think there was any recourse if they observed it.
No, but that is anecdotal and has no relevance to anything.
Yep. Wooden spoon and made to go get it.
I don’t understand the point you’re attempting to make.
Marlonius, thank you for sharing.
I got “swatted” a few times in high school. Once I was in the shower, and I had thrown a towel upwards so it would hang from a pipe running along the ceiling. The coach saw this and swatted me. It was worse than usual because 1) I was naked and 2) all the other guys were watching! :o
Spanked at home and caned once at school. I got lucky with the caning because the guy administering it was gentle soul. His heart really wan’t in it. It would have hurt like hell if it was some sadistic bastard.
I was spanked regularly, but mostly not seriously. Belted once and I remember that, although not why. Born 1937 and everyone was spanked. When my own kids came along in the 60s, we did spank them fairly regularly. At some point, my wife and I decided that this wasn’t working. So we stopped. Their behavior, especially my son’s who had gotten most of the spanking, improved almost immediately and we never spanked either of them again. When the third came along in 1973, he was never spanked.
Got the strap at least twice in public school by the principal on the palm of my hand (late 50’s - early 60’s; I forget exactly what grades I was in). I don’t think I was ever spanked by anyone. My dad used to start counting “1…2…3…” if I was being stubborn; I never had the nerve to wait for what came after 3.
In retrospect:
I was ceremonially spanked when I got out of line.
The “hairbrush” was never actually applied.
My mouth was washed out with soap. Hilarious consider my mother now swears more than I do. Therefore this was an effective treatment.
I was once and only once, upon agreement of both parents, spanked repeatedly and with some force for being a mouthy, sullen, cynical and disobedient 10 year old. That didn’t have any lasting effect except to gleefully remind my in their mid-80s parents that I clearly remember the event should they get out of line. As they get older they are less amused by this and are starting to get worried looks.
On that…
In my example above where my boyfriend had received a punch to the face as punishment, I did tell my parents and they did call his parents out of concern. They were told straight out that it was none of their business and it was left at that.
Spanked with a hand or the dreaded switch. Sometimes I would have to pick the switch.
I do not feel that I was abused.
I was spanked on the butt as a small child for things like playing with the stove, or running too far ahead, when my parents thought I might run into traffic (we lived in Manhattan).
My mother also used to beat me with fists occasionally. She had a bad temper that was easy to trigger. She didn’t really want children, and it showed. However, my aunt took care of me most of the time, and she was really a genius at handling children. She wasn’t morally opposed to spanking, but rarely ever did so (she spanked me once, and I deserved it, and it was a single swat on the butt that hurt my dignity more than anything). I don’t remember having bruises from being beaten, but I do remember a few times when my aunt was just supposed to have me after school, and somehow, I ended up staying for a couple of days. I was pretty little, and I don’t know what all transpired-- I usually got told my mother had some kind of project on a deadline.
My aunt and uncle moved to Indiana when I was nine, which was just before my family went to the Soviet Union for a year. When we came back, I remember being really sad and missing my aunt terribly. I spent a summer in Indiana with them, and then my mother spent nine months in Czechoslovakia doing research for a book. I think I was depressed during a lot of that time, but my mother wasn’t there to fight with, so it didn’t seem terrible.
When my mother came back, we were fighting constantly, and there was a really ugly episode that involved me getting hit with a hair brush, and in a weird bit of karma, or irony, or something, my mother tearing a tendon (or ligament, I don’t remember) in her elbow. I ended up living with my aunt and uncle while I was in high school.
Honestly, the most painful part of the whole thing, aside from when I was missing my aunt, was the fact that my brother never got hit, and when I was about eight or nine, and I asked my mother why, she said it was because he wasn’t bad, like I was.
My aunt is my father’s sister-in-law, but she always treated me like I was her own child. She told me once that we were really related, because all Jews are family, if you go back far enough. I just learned that all Ashkenazic Jews are actually from an original stock of only about 350 people (of course, there were always occasional trysts with the neighbors, and lately, converts, and at any rate, I’m not fully Ashkenazic), but it turns out my aunt was more literal than I realized.
Wow. Some of these responses are actually making me tear up a bit. I just can’t comprehend how parents or caregivers could be so cruel to kids. I don’t mean the spankings for actually doing something wrong, but the unfair punishments for things that either weren’t the kid’s fault or that were blown completely out of proportion.
Me, I got spanked as a kid, including a few whippings on the (clothed) butt with a belt. Not many, and they were reserved for serious transgressions (like the time the neighbor called my mom to report that I had ridden my skateboard down a hill near our house and gone sailing out through an intersection right in front of an oncoming car).
I remember one time my mom got a wooden paddle to use on me–she tried it once, and I instinctively put my arm around to block the shot, so she hit my arm and raised a pretty impressive looking bruise. She felt so bad about it that she never used that paddle again.
I’d say I had a pretty typical '70s upbringing, spanking-wise, at least when compared to my peers.
My mom may have given me a swat on the butt very occasionally as a child, but I have no specific memories of it. I was a pretty good kid for the most part.
One time when I was probably no more that 5 or so my grandmother got a yardstick and whacked my butt with it. I even remember the location of this incident — just inside the back door at my grandparents’ house, the landing where if you turned to the left you went into the basement, and went up a couple of steps to the kitchen if you turned to the right.
I don’t know what I did to merit this, but it must have been pretty bad because my grandmother loved me dearly and I loved her, and I can’t remember any other incidence of her even so much as yelling at me — and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents.
In grade school my third-grade teacher whacked me on the butt once with her hand, which was, on balance, probably deserved under the circumstances. Other than this, I never got paddled, by teacher or principal, though I had friends who were.
So for me, corporal punishment was exceedingly rare. However, my mom remarried when I was 12, and we moved in with my stepdad, who had three sons by his first marriage and (unusually for the time) had custody of them.
My stepdad was generally an affable guy, but he was what you might call “excitable”; if something really set him off, he would lose all control. I can remember a few isolated incidents (less that five total, probably) where he just went off the rails and beat my stepbrothers with a belt. It was pitiful to watch; they would be begging for mercy and saying “No, Daddy, please, Daddy” but he would continue to whale on them while shouting at the top of his lungs.
As I wasn’t his son, he never did this to me (though I don’t recall being culpable in the infractions my brothers were being punished for, either). The rest of the time, he was a good and kind man.
I only met my stepdad’s father a few times, but I got the impression that he was very much of a “my way or the highway” type of guy, so my theory was that my stepdad was probably beaten in a similar manner as a child.