“The problem with children these days is that they need a bloody good hiding”

[TheHeadOfTheHouse]

Said by a relative in his 70s.

I’m noticing that the older generation (over 60s) seem to think that although they were beaten to a pulp, they still think this is the correct way to bring children up.

We have Autism and ADHD in our wider family. Older relatives don’t seem to be very tolerant of this and keep implying that the cause of this is too soft parenting.

A relative was having a debate with me the other day saying how parenting was much better in his day, police could hit you, teachers used to cane you etc and how there wasn’t the behaviour that we have these days.

He was very defensive when I told him that I’m very glad all that has been abolished.

“Yeah, but we didn’t have teenagers stabbing each other back then”

Hes one of a few people I’ve come across lately who is all for hitting children.

It seems to be were Autism and ADHD children are concerned that it seems to provoke people saying this

There was a thread on the parenting board the other day where OP asked for help with her older child hitting her younger one and the amount of people who said to smack her was unbelievable! Although they phrased it as 'tapping' or something similar - trying to justify it to themselves I think.

I’m in my 60s, got more of a hippy, flower child thing going on. Never used corporal punishment, either as a parent or as a teacher.
TBH, your relative sounds as narrow-minded and bigoted as you, albeit about different things. He’s wrong and so are you with your generalisations.

Agree with this.

I was a teenage mum, brought up in poverty myself. DS's dad not in the picture, my own dad in prison, my mum suffers with severe depression.

As a young lone parent, little money and living in social housing, bringing up a son who has no real male role model in his life, he has always been majorly in danger of getting involved in crime, drugs, gangs and the like.

I have had to parent him perhaps a lot differently than many here on MN. Of course I do not hit him (he's 15 and bigger than me so he could easily hit me back anyway) but I have brought him up with discipline, and punishments. He could so easily go off the rails if I didn't.

More ageism. I'm in my 60s and none of my contemporaries slapped or hit their children.

Mumsnet used to be very anti smacking but I've noticed there are more brainless brutes than there used to be. Someone said it might be due to the increase in MRA types on here, which is possible. It's disgusting, whatever the reason.

Teenagers have always stabbed and been violent to each other. The behavior of the teens in Romeo and Juliet was based on the gangs around London bridge when Shakespeare lived there. They were just not seen as children before.

The problem with the attitude of physical punishment is teaches people that physical violence is a genuine conflict resolution, that can be interpreted different ways by different people.

On the other hand, gentle parenting also creates issues because it doesn't prepare children for the real world which isn't patient, and kind and their needs are not always the most important thing.

Towards who? The people who could beat them, yes, but the racism, sexism, territorial violence, DV etc was off the scale. People forget that groups of lads from different schools used to go to fields to fight each other. It was a teen fight club that everyone ignored.

I always find it ironic because the worst lads when I was growing up were from homes that had DV in. They were getting regularly beaten. If you watch prison documentaries, often the men wasn't violent until they got a beating/caning.

“The problem with children these days is that they need a bloody good hiding”

“The problem with children these days is that they see grown adults, often in positions of power and authority, getting away with all kinds of shite behaviour from simple rudeness all the way up to, and including, rape and murder”

It’s a ‘rule for thee and not for me’ mindset, which I imagine your relative would employ if you used PP’s suggestion about offering to beat the shit out of him for being a dick.

Depressingly common these days, at least kids have the excuse that they are, you know, children.

None of the adults fully embracing this level of selfishness and/or criminality have ever a sane rationale for their behaviour though.

My late grandad would have been all over this method of dealing with discipline for kids.

Alongside that he would take kicked every non white person out of the UK, made it compulsory for women to do all house and kid work and banned women from pubs.

He wasn’t very pleasant.

A wee bit of casual ageism here. I am 70 and was brought up by a mother who didn't believe in corporal punishment and would be 103 if she were still alive.

As for no stabbing, where did he get that idea from? My generation were killing people in N. Ireland and his generation were mods and rockers

You have violent relatives who think like that.
Don't go putting it on a whole generation.

This thread makes it sound like the choice is between whacking the shit out of your kids, or wimpy permissive 'Mummy is sad when you try to gouge out your playmates' eyes' kind of parenting.

Maybe there's a middle way?! For the record, I DO think children should have some fear of being punished for wrongdoing. And parents who are too thick/lazy/pathetic to set out right from wrong can only expect consequences later on.

This debate can go on all day long. Some of us had the odd slap here and there and some didn’t.

Some lives are fine some aren’t.

What makes the difference in my humble option was if it crossed over into physical abuse.

In my mind a little slap would not harm in the long term a beating with a fist is different altogether

Though some on here would say a slap was enough to warrant abuse

Yep.Here we go 👏FWIW I have never smacked my now adult children and my friends never did with their children .
I was never hit by my parents who would in their 90s if still alive!

Do we?

I don't remember quite so much school violence when I was at school

Although knife crime etc has always been around

This.

My mum is in her late 70s and she never raised a hand to me or my siblings. In the 70s and 80s the parents of all my friends were honestly quite cool and new-wavey. There was no smacking going on.

I was thinking about this recently I was slapped as a child.. back of the legs and on the bum, I remember each time because it was only 5/6 max.
I don't feel it affected me. However it never occurred to me to slap my children when they were bold.. they're 15 and 12 now.
I have been frustrated beyond belief with their behaviour especially ds as he was difficult as a toddler to put it mildly but I just know that 1. It would be me losing control and taking my anger/frustration out on my small child and 2. It doesn't work!

What worked for me was natural consequences and positive reinforcement.
Now don't get me wrong I wasn't always consistent I shouted a lot and wanted to run away from home regularly 😂 but hitting my children no matter if it was a "tap" or a proper slap wasn't an option

The issue I see is lack of consequences and children not hearing no.

I have a friend who didn't think it was fair that her child had to share toys at playgroup 🫣😂

I agree that behaviour amongst kids and teens is pretty poor nowadays, and that parenting seems to be way too permissive, but more violence is hardly the answer. My dad intimidated and assaulted me when I was a kid and it hasn’t made me a better person, it just taught me that aggression and violence is the fallback response. It took me a long time into adulthood and shamefully a little bit into parenthood to unlearn that response.

You believe that an entire generation thinks this way? That's incredibly discriminatory of you.

Violent crime generally has been declining over the centuries.

(I will admit this is a long term view!)

www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/manuel-eisner-historical-trends-in-violence.pdf

So we do live in a less violent society generally.

In the U.K. there was an upswing in reported violent crime in the 1960s which lasted until about the 2000s and it's been mostly falling since.

lordslibrary.parliament.uk/trends-in-violent-crime/#heading-8

There are some arguments that this doesn't reflect a true increase in violence, and that for example if a wife was being beaten by her husband in the 1950s she would not have bothered to go to the police nor would it have been considered a crime, but in the 1960s and onwards she was more likely to.

Also some people have argued that eg in the 1950s if a homeless kid was killed by stabbing the police would not have bothered with it, whereas more recently there is an expectation it is reported and dealt with.

Apparently MN mods don't agree. They think it's fine.

I’m noticing that the older generation (over 60s) seem to think that although they were beaten to a pulp, they still think this is the correct way to bring children up.

That is not true, OP. I am in my 70s, most of my friends are in their 60s or 70s, and though we grew up with corporal punishment, none of us support it. The whole idea that is is legal to use physical violence against another human being is appalling, and then that person is a child, it is even worse.

I will say that I have seen some (not all and not the majority by any means) very undisciplined children, and in my years as a teacher, have had to deal with some of them. It is the role of parents to teach their children how to behave - but not by physically assaulting them.

As a parent of ASD children, I haven't come across this attitude amongst the over 60s and I think its unfair to stereotype a generation like this. I have found intolerance towards my children from all age groups including professionals who were supposed to understand and support us. I try and educate about autism/ASD if someone challenges me and hope that the other person goes away with a bit more understanding. But its a slog; society is very dis/ableist and a lot of people don't even recognise that they're biased.

I’m over 60 and never hit my children, my mum is over 90 and her and Dad never hit us, their parents didn’t hit them either. I definitely don’t think it’s a generational thing, it’s more of a bad parenting thing. Hitting a child is failing as a parent and at basic level it’s assault.