to wonder if this was an unusual attitude in the 1950s? RE spanking?

[hagle]

pbs.twimg.com/media/BS6x5xbIEAI_mD3.jpg:large

Was this a normal thing back then?

It looks American.

I'm Scottish and my parents were born in the 1920s. My Dad was a heavy drinker and could be violent as a result of alcohol but he never, ever had a superior attitude towards women and wouldn't have endorsed this kind of shite.

I know that domestic violence was not treated with the seriousness it is now. Back then if your husband hit you the police didn't get involved unless you specifically pressed charges. They changed the law a few years ago so that they could intervene without the injured party's consent.

Domestic violence, men hitting women in arguments is one thing, I knew that went on. But men spanking women because they'd been bad? In a serious, not sexual way? That really happened?

It's such a weird thought that you could be spanked by your DH because you had done something 'wrong'. And he wouldn't be appearing in court for assault. Just unimaginable.

OMG that last comment!

"Yes. Most of them have it coming to them anyway. If they don't, it will remind them how well off they are. I subscribe to the theory that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

WTAF? Someone please tell me that this man never married and died alone...

Someone posted about the series I Love Lucy which often ended in her being spanked by her husband. So maybe it was seen as acceptable then?

Is it genuine? Not a spoof/photo-shopped 'joke'? Shit like this makes me feel very very angry.

I wondered if this was a spoof when I first read it.

However, when I read it again, I noticed that all 4 men were from Brooklyn, which had quite a tough reputation in the 50s. Perhaps this was the view of some people in one small area, and not really representative of attitudes across the rest of America at the time. Or perhaps they received a range of different opinions, but for some reason only printed the most extreme ones?

My parents were married in NY in the 1950s, and neither they nor any of their friends or relatives would have thought this was anything other than outrageous.

I looked it up, no references to it being a spoof

No it's not a spoof. I'm sure in some of the old black and white films there are references to, and acts of, men spanking women.

The John Wayne film McClintock is an example of that.

McLintock

I'm quite confident neither of my grandfathers would have shared these men's views, but neither of them were from Brooklyn.