To ask how those of us who were smacked

I haven't RTFT but I have read your posts OP. I'm reluctant to post as last time I made my views known it was a pile on but given i appear to be once again going against the tide and you've asked for different perspectives....
I was smacked 3 times as a child and each time was because I had gone way over the line in my behaviour. I didn't do me any harm and because I fortunately wasn't smacked like you were for every transgression big or small, the lesson I learned those three times stuck. I would smack my children if I felt a short sharp shock of a smack on the hand was warranted for behaviour that was way over the line. I'd give warnings first including a warning that I'd smack and I wouldn't leave them battered etc but yes I would smack. Thankfully I've not been put in the position where I've felt I've had to give a warning of a smack let alone followed through but my belief is it didn't harm me, it worked, and if I felt it was necessary then I would.
I fully understand my position is not popular and last time I posted on this topic I did engage in discussion about it but I'm not willing to do so this time if anyone replies attacking me or calling me abusive. I welcome and value discussion and different points of view but I'm not interested in defending myself.
I am sorry for what you went through as a child though @ButThisIsMyHappyFace I do not agree with what your mother did and I will never agree with smacking a child for every single thing a parent deems is 'wrong or naughty' and I don't agree with anything more than a short sharp smack on the hand.

I was smacked and don’t even think about it. I didn’t smack my own children as times and parenting have changed but being smacked didn’t impact me in any way. It was normal.

Do you feel that it led you to behave on the correct path

That is so awful, just appalling.

I wasn't smacked very often and whilst it 'didn't do me any harm' I still remember the shame and humiliation that came with being smacked. I remember once it was my birthday party and me and my friends were sitting round the table eating our party food. I must have been getting a bit giddy and my mum gave me clip round round head. It wasn't very hard but I still hate that she did that and felt like it was deliberate to humiliate me.

I think it’s parental volatility, cruelty or loss of control that’s the issue - the cause of smacking does not go away if you stop smacking, it just comes out in another form. I distinctly remember a sense of injustice on the extremely rare occasions I was smacked, but I didn’t find smacking any worse than everything being swept off the kitchen table, or being shouted at. Imvho, most parents have occasionally lost control of their emotions with their children; the damage comes from this being par for the course, or the result of a nervous breakdown, not from a rare, unfortunate outburst.

I was smacked throughout childhood. It was normal. All of cousins, friends and classmates were smacked. I felt humiliated when smacked. It hadn’t affected my relationship with my Dad (Mum has been dead decades). It just is what happened. A cultural norm.

I did not smack my own children. I never once felt that impulse.

Born in the 60s, raised in the 70s-80s. I am one of 3 girls. All of us were smacked and hit. With hairbrushes, canes, sticks - even a plate. Never on the face or torso - always the legs or bottom. Dad hit my sisters so hard with a stick you could see the 'stripes' on their backs. My dad woke me in bed once, tore off the covers and my nightie to deliver a very hard smacking for something I must've done earlier to annoy him. It hurt so much I couldn't cry out or breathe after the third whack.
It was really frightening, but I suppose at the time we saw it as 'normal' parenting.
Now I see it as totally, horribly wrong. I vowed never to smack our children.

It made me hate my dad, and me and my sisters were never close to him.
My mum I can sort of 'forgive' as she had a lot of life stresses as we grew up, and she didn't have a good parental role models.
I'm really glad it's not acceptable any more.

I was bought up in the 60’s, smacked by both my parents, (not beaten black & blue) I don’t even give it a thought now & has done no lasting damage,

No I mean autistic children attack people when they having a meltdown. They hurt other children and adults.

I was smacked at home and at school. Not excessively but now and again. I still resent one time being smacked at school because it was completely unnecessary (I asked for help with a maths problem - who smacks a child for asking for help?). At home I was told repeatedly that I was a bad person and forced to pray to God every night to make me a good girl. I grew up believing I was a bad person and had zero self confidence as a result. I struggle to forgive that part as I was only a child. The smacking didn’t bother me so much as I could be hard work at times.

I was never smacked. I was the youngest and ‘the pet’. One of my sisters was though - by our mum, never our dad.

It taught me a good lesson. I’ve never been an angry, shouty parent. I’ve seen first hand how awful it is to have a mum that’s quick to anger. We would never in a million years hit our kids and I think any parent that does it - ever- is simply terrible and should not have had children.

I was born in the early 90s and smacked occasionally. Doesn’t bother me at all. Like a pp said I knew I was loved, it was just part of discipline then so it doesn’t effect me at all

I remember being very scared in infant school of the possibility of being hit by the teacher. My parents never ever smacked, but when I started school in the 1970s, corporal punishment was still at thing. I remember kids regularly being whacked on the hand with a wooden ruler and I can remember by brother getting the slipper from the head and being held back by other teachers (it was probably only one but it felt like more) as I tried to rush down the corridor to get to him. I was never hit but I do remember the fear that I might be.

The real irony is my mum will say herself that I was pretty good kid up to a point. The point being when I stopped giving many fucks, because if I was going to get a beating for collecting conkers after school(one example), might as well have some fun anyway. Plus the hurt, rage, frustration and complete mindfuck that she did it because she “cared”.I never did anything terribly bad after that either, but of course, that’s my perspective.

Me too. I was never smacked in an abusive way though. I was given fair warning, it was never in a fit of utter rage and it felt even handed at the time and still does as I look back.

I adored my parents. They adored me. That was never in question.

I had loads of needs that weren't met due to challenges my parents had. The quality of my food was poor, the house was filthy and bitter cold and we raised ourselves pretty much. Nowadays SS would be involved I think. My parents should never really have had kids but it's just what you did back then.

Once I got to the age where I realised how upset my parents were when they smacked me and I realised I didn't want that for them, I learned to behave the way they wanted me to so I don't think it did me any harm and definitely improved my behaviour.

My dad smacked me from time to time. And I do think it's affected me but lots more times he just totally utterly lost his rag verbally and said things like "get out of my sight, I don't want to see you".
That's what I remember more than the smacking. His anger, so I'm not sure in my case that the smacking itself was damaging. It was more emotional/psychological I'd say.

It has left me (or maybe I was born like that? 🤔) very fearful and easily upset by other people's anger

I was smacked all of the time but I really was an annoying little shit. It doesn't bother me and it hasn't affected me. Nothing else worked at the time (not even that).

I was born in the 60s. My dad would smack me occasionally for not doing well enough at school, up to the age of about 14/15. I was generally a high achiever, though. He was very kind generally and I loved him very much. Looking back though, I think it made me afraid of male anger and I think it’s been quite damaging in my life.

I was smacked, and I have a good relationship with my parents and no issues from it.

I don't smack my own children, not because I see it as abuse but I think more because we've evolved past it. It's not socially acceptable anymore like it was then - they didn't really know any better and we now have thousands of resources and tools and experts telling us what to do instead.

It's in the same boat for me as my mother not attempting to breastfeed because "formula is better, says science" it was such a widely held view that she was given tablets in hospital to dry up her milk, as was everyone. I also slept on my stomach as a baby, also totally opposite of advice now. My MIL used to give my dh brandy in a bottle at bedtime to help him sleep and weened at 8 weeks with weetabix in a bottle!

In 20 years when my kids are having babies it'll be different again. We learn as we go.

Got all of 3 smacks in my entire life and each time I never did that behaviour again. I was a VERY good kid, never stepped out of line, never was a crappy teenager doing drugs or anything like that.
Though I also think it made us not as close a family, like I'm close with my mum but we're not a cuddly family if that makes sense. I was a little afraid of them but not really and I'm not now.

Exactly this. I was smacked apparently. I don't even remember it.
I remember one friend aged about 7 say his dad tried to smack him with a wooden spoon and how they both ended up running round and round the kitchen table. Kid dined out on it for months and we all thought it was hysterical!

I was smacked in the 80's, more often by my mum than my dad. I can understand her smacking in anger in a moment of frustration. But there were times when I was smacked as a punishment, like for not tidying my bedroom or after I had lost something at school. I was warned in advance I would be getting a smack and made to bend over while she shouted why I was being hit. I found that hard to forgive, especially as she was still doing it to me as a young teen. It was used to humiliate and control.

I don't think about it often now and she is a kind, helpful grandparent who never raises her voice. But for a few years after I left home I was quite angry with her.

My parents grew up in the 1940's and 50's and have spoken about how they were regularly hit with a belt or slipper by their own parents or given the ruler or a clip round the ear at school so I have forgiven them as they were excellent, loving, stable parents otherwise. I think if they had been neglectful I would feel differently and I'm very sorry for people where it was part of a wider pattern of abuse but I don't see my own experience in that way

I think the issue may be not so much as to whether we were smacked as children but rather how loved we felt generally? Unloving/unkind parents may say things that are far more harmful & hurtful than loving parents that used smacking as a form of discipline in an otherwise loving relationship?

I was smacked hard across the backs of my legs as DM shouted at me: a smack on every syllable.
It’s something that I’ve been thinking about only recently, and I’m in my 60’s.