How socially-acceptable was smacking children in the 70s/80s/90s?

[WickedLabubus]

I was born mid eighties. As a child, my siblings and I were smacked quite a bit (as in once-twice a week) by our dad. It was always on the bum and only if we had done something naughty. However, it was painful and usually left a mark. This happened for most of my childhood and didn’t stop until moved away for university in the 00s.

If its relevant, I grew up in a working class northern town. I’d say that 50% of my friends in primary and secondary school were also smacked at home.

These days, I work adjacent to safeguarding, where smacking and the like are taken very seriously. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem as common these days.

it has got me thinking though, was my childhood abnormal or has smacking just become drastically unacceptable in a very short space of time?

1970s and smacked regularly. DF (v rarely) slapped us on our calves and that didn't hurt at all. DM belted us round the head and we literally saw stars. It was usually because she was angry rather than because we had done anything particularly awful. It was abusive and nothing to do with teaching us to behave well. I think she was fundamentally unsuited to being a parent and didn't like children very much.

A friend who is in her sixties told me that when she was at school a routine punishment was to get hit with a bible! And it was a massive old bible too.

But OP I think your experience is extreme. Smacking as a routine multiple times a week and until you were an adult is not something I have ever encountered. Hope you are ok and manage to get whatever help you might need.

If you're in the UK I would say it was very common in 70s and 80s and became less so in the 90s but still fairly common up until early 00s. I think the big shift came in late 00s when campaigning around a change in the law really took hold. Remember across UK corporal punishment was still legal in state school until late 80s and in private schools until late 90s...

I was smacked regularly in 80s (by my DM. Never my DF).;and you would see children being smacked - on the street, at friends houses. It wasn't hidden.

All that said - what you experienced sounds unusual in it's frequency and intensity. That would have been regarded as quite extreme. I can see now that none of it was ok. But I admit I normalised my own experience and differentiated between what I got and what my friends with stricter parents got (like what you experienced) until I had my own children.

I never smacked my children and don't know anyone who did. It was quite a sudden definitive shift from one generation to the next.

Late1960s baby here, my beloved parents never laid a finger on me. Dh who is 4 years older than me was hit with a belt regularly by his dad. At age 13 him and his older brother had to stand side by side and drop their pants so their dad could hit them repeatedly with his belt. I was horrified when he told me and made sure his dad was never left alone with our son. FIL was very religious and certainly not a "cuddly" grandad. The humiliation my dh and his older brother suffered stayed with them and effected them throughout their lives. The belting only stopped when the older brother started to fight back. How their mother stood by whilst her husband did that to the boys I'll never know. My dh has never laid a finger on our son, what he went through made him determined never to do that to his own child.

As I pointed out a lot of the corporal punishment came from mothers. Yet, most of the women on here who were hit as children will be allowed to care for their grandchildren. I was form tutor to a girl at secondary school who reported her parents for physical abuse. In the end she stayed with her parents rather than being taken into care. I bumped into her recently and she has two little girls who are regularly cared for by her parents. I didn’t say anything but she defended her decision to allow her physically abusive parents to care for their grandchildren little girls by saying to me, it’s what I know. It is recognised as the cycle of abuse. There was a recent case of a little boy being killed by his abusive grandparents who were determined to ‘break’ him. All carried out with their daughter’s permission. It was what she ‘knew’.

I am so sorry to read this. I hope you’re in a better place now.

I’m in my 60’s. We were never told off let alone smacked. We probably needed to be told off as we were lively kids but it wasn’t my parents style. I had an extremely happy childhood.

It was more than acceptable in the 70s. Schools smacked, hit with rulers and caned in the 70s. My uncle remembers getting the cane across his arse. My cousin was smacked at school as well. Schools didn’t do this in 80s onwards. But parents routinely smacked in 80s. It was a fully normal thing to do. I was smacked. My mum only smacked us when we really deserved it and had deliberately been pretty naughty. my dad enjoyed hitting us though and did it when it was absolutely uncalled for. He did more than smacking as well, he beat us badly.

Yes, smacked in the 80's and first half of 90's.

Both parents but I think a lot of DM's smacks were her anger related to the menopause, but she didn't realise it.

Although it was no longer legal to physically punish at school the whole time I was there, one teacher in particular would throw the board rubber at pupils making sure it hit them, and pick people up by their collar, amongst other things. Nothing seemed to happen about him.

Definitely remember children being smacked in public by their parents too, including in the 90's.

Pretty normal in the 70s and 80s - I was quite surprised when I got to university in the 90s and made friends with people who hadn't been smacked. Starting to go out in the 90s I guess?

Working class midlands upbringing in the 90’s & we didn’t get hit. I do think friends did though and in the same way you describe, don’t know about the age it went on until though!

When I was at school in the 1950s/60s the nuns smacked us with a ruler on the calf.
When FIL was a child - 1920/30s - when they were given spellings to learn, if anyone got anything wrong everyone in the class got a single whack with the cane.

Born mid 80s. Smacked very rarely by mum only and just legs or bum and only for being exceptionally naughty. We would all fight a lot physically as siblings and I think it was the only way my mum knew to try and break up a fight. It stopped in our teens as we stopped fighting.

I'm also a 90s child and was also a good child, never got into trouble at school, worked hard, ate my vegetables etc but was regularly hit by my mum too, for normal childhood misbehaviour like bickering with siblings.

I don't think my mum could deny it happened though as she used a cane for all us kids (well, mainly the girls 🙄) and since it was her only "go-to" punishment it was pretty regular and left nasty welts at the time so they weren't exactly forgettable. She gets upset and cries if I mention anything negative about my childhood though, so there's still no point in bringing it up.

I feel the same way about it contributing to my anxiety too. It's difficult to work through the anxiety we learn as children as it's learned as our brains and personalities are still developing so I hope you're doing well 💐

I grew up in 70s/80s, I can't remember being smacked by my parents but was given the ruler by a teacher.
Being given the cane or slipper by headteacher or for less offences the ruler by class teacher was normal in my primary school juniors in late 70s , I can remember it being banned at school in early 80s?? I think!
Most of my friends were smacked at home until around tge age of 13/14 but not very frequently.
Being smacked in public in 70s/80s was also acceptable.
The threat of a smack was used as a deterant.
I think being smacked as frequently as you were until the age of 18 was unusual.

I posted further up thread about my experiences growing up.ive remembered that out of 8 flats in the block there were 3 battered wives(horrible 70s term)my mum being one of them and I daresay the violence was also meted out to the children as well.
I stopped a woman battering her son round the head in a shop doorway where I worked,she hit him so hard it lifted him off his feet this was 90s.

Not normal in my household in the 50s, my mother and father never raised a hand. Once my grandfather threatened to smack my brother and my mother practically threw him out of the house saying you don't hit children here.

I was hit by my mom and dad. Mom got me to bend over the bed and hit me with slipper whereas dad more likely to hit me with his hand. Mom told him to hit me where it didn’t show. Then he progressed to feeling my breasts.

I think I got off lightly for the time, really. My parents weren't the best but I was never smacked. I was a 60s/70s child.

My children were born in the 90s and neither DH nor I ever smacked them.

That's how it should be.👍
No one should be hitting anyone.

Born in the mid-80s, I only remember getting smacked once and that was for repeatedly undoing my seatbelt on a busy road. Mum cried after. I remember friends saying they'd get smacked for being naughty, but never actually saw it. Never heard of it by secondary age though.

I started primary school in 1989 and there was no corporal punishment by then. In secondary (private, where I think certain things went on longer than in the state sector) there was no physical punishment from teachers but it was still sometimes used "unofficially" by prefects/older pupils. More in the boys' houses than girls.

I was smacked and, as detailed on here, also smacked my children. I wish I hadn't, but I really was at a loss as to know how to control them otherwise. This was back in the early/mid 90s. Nowadays everyone has recourse to many forms of advice on the internet as to what to do if your children behave badly, are defiant etc. Back then you relied on advice from others or your own parents, so smacking was the 'go to' down through the generations.

Born in late 70s. Smacking was normal in our social circle (working class Scotland), which wasn't to say it wasn't horrible. I think I was a pretty well-behaved child but my mum tended to hit out in anger for the slightest thing. It's the anger I remember most, and how frightened I'd be once she got that look about her. I was also continually told I was "lucky" because mum only ever used her hand and not an implement. Quite a few of my friends were belted but mum didn't like that. That said, it was always bare bum and always really painful. I was also never smacked by my dad - again, I was told I was lucky to have this arrangement. He would sometimes order the punishment if he thought I was being cheeky or whatever, but always said that if he were to hit me, he'd probably do some real damage so it was better than mum carried out the smacking. I think it stopped when I went to high school. Smacking until University age definitely does not seem normal.

I remember once being at a friend's house for a sleepover. We had been misbehaving and her dad decided to belt us all. Her mum intervened to say that my mum wouldn't like that so there was the big conversation about whether I should be belted or not. Eventually, they called my mum who agreed that the other mum could smack me but the dad was not allowed to belt me. I still remember the absolute terror while my fate was decided so clinically, as well as the sound of my friend and her brother being hit with a belt in their bedrooms. I don't think I'll ever forget that. My friend's mum smacked me really hard and I was crying but also aware that I'd gotten off lightly. My friend was really upset with me that I had escaped the big punishment while she and her brother took the brunt of it.

Corporal punishment was still legal in my first three years of school. From talking to other friends of the same age, it seems it had pretty much died out in other places at the same time but children were still smacked at my school. P1-3 got smacked bottoms in the classroom and P4+ could be sent to the headmaster for the strap on the hand. I was petrified of being smacked and luckily never experienced it for myself but did see it happening. I was aware of older kids being strapped and it sounded absolutely barbaric. I remember seeing some of the toughest boys sobbing over their injured hands, but all corporal punishment was made illegal before my year entered P4 - thank goodness.

Absolutely none of my friends and colleagues from roughly the same generation but brought up in middle-class households were ever smacked. I would also never consider lifting a finger to a child.

I was born late 70s. My dad smacked me once and my mum told him if he ever touched me again she would leave him (despite her being beaten weekly by him)

My neighbour (same age as me) was regularly caned as a child. The cane was kept in the hall of their house and I hated even seeing it when I went over there so I avoided going.