Did all parents hit their kids in the 1970s?

[Polythene]

I often hear that this was the norm. But was it, really?

Me and sister were threatened with the belt occasionally....but it never came to that in the end.....but I do remember getting a few slaps on the back of my legs/bum...one slap from my mum in particular left a red handprint 😱😧

I know. Crazy isn't it.

We were threatened with being smacked but I can only remember it actually happening to me twice - both times on the bum and it was due to dangerous behaviour. (One time was running away from my mum and crossing over a busy road by myself, for example.) I can remember my brother being smacked - again on the bum - because my parents discovered was stealing from a local shop. He was also made to go back with my dad, return his loot, and apologise.

I was born in 1974, brother ‘79. The threat was “do you want a hot behind?”, or “you’ll get a hot bot if you keep doing X…” I do remember kids in my class getting “a hiding” and some parents using things like slippers to hit with. Mine was a sharp spank with a palm on a bare bum.

Yes. Then when it's time for you to look after them they say things like "that's why we never spanked you".
Cue my hysterical laughter. 😭😡

@Polythene I was born 1978 and never hit.

I used to find it strange on the walk home from primary school that one of the mum’s would shout at her child that she’d slap her legs if she didn’t behave.

Hitting was definitely not the norm in my household. However, my sister did end up pregnant at 16, so maybe a bit of slapping prior to this was actually needed!

There was occasional smacking in my infant school in the 90s! It was illegal by then I’m sure. It was one teacher in particular who did it 2 or 3 times that I actually witnessed- parents knew, I have absolutely no idea why it wasn’t reported. Possibly because a lot of parents were still smacking their kids at home, mine did and I know most of my friends’ parents smacked at least once in a while.

Why are you asking?

No way! I was a child in the 70’s and remember it was a huge drama when a friend of mine got slapped by her mum. It was shocking and I remember other parents giving her a wide berth after that.

Yes

I was born early 70s and me and my sister were both smacked fairly regularly. I occasionally had hand print bruises from it. Not sure if my friends were smacked, no one really talked about it.
There was no physical punishment at school though thankfully.
I didn't smack my son when he was growing up, can't imagine why a loving parent would do that, can't relate to why my parents did it. I never learnt lessons from it because I was too upset about it happening.

Unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me. I went to a really toxic primary school run by a horrid woman and she recruited teachers just like her. Mangy old bat had her fingers in education until she was well into her eighties. There was a core "gang" of nasty teachers who clearly were in the job to bully small children. Thank GOD corporal punishment had been outlawed by that time - although my mum would have put a stop to it. Still, I got lucky.

Shoving a six-year-old hard in the back was exactly the kind of thing they'd have done.

Born late 50’s …lived in fear, punished for making a noise, anything. Real batterings, terrifying shouting and screaming mostly by father who we hated. Mother couldn’t intervene . No-one did.
Our childhood was abusive but it was hidden, never spoken of and if injured we had to lie to medics, I ‘fell down stairs’ a lot. We all left ‘home’ as soon as we could.
Dreadful situation which has had life-long repercussions.

I was hit by my mother fairly often. She also used to follow me round the house until she managed to make me cry. I think she used to take all her frustrations with life out on me - they used to call me naughty bananafake. Although I wasn’t exactly compliant I hardly did anything wrong - no boyfriends, pregnancies, drinking, drugs, coming in late, stealing, swearing, shouting, slamming doors etc. She just didn’t like me much.

She stopped when I hit her back once when I was a teen.

I think it’s awful to hit children. However the verbal stuff probably affected me more.

Yes a slap across the legs was normal to us

then there were children who where beaten that was seen as something different and fearful we understood that wasn’t right (I was one of these children while living with my stepfather)

Yes, corporal punishment was outlawed in state schools in 1986. I just checked, and, unbelievably, it was only made illegal in private schools in 1998. As a primary school kid in the late sixties and very early seventies, the boys were regularly made to bend over and get the slipper on their backsides, and the girls got the ruler - I still remember lining up, palm held out and the thwack on my fingers, a punishment for persistent daydreaming in class. My Mum, however, only very occasionally gave me the odd slap, usually out of sheer impatience.

But even when I was a student in the early 1980s, physical punishment as a way of disciplining kids was still considered perfectly acceptable among a lot of people: I remember an almighty row with a couple of fellow students who said, "You've got to teach them right from wrong", with the added opinion that this was the only way you could possibly keep kids in check and make clear their boundaries, and my fruitless attempts to argue that hitting your child was not going to "teach" them anything if the child made no connection between whatever offence they had committed and the slap or beating or whatever was considered appropriate, or understood why.

I was smacked occasionally by my mum if I really pushed it (never by my dad because apparently it had been decided by them that he wasn’t allowed as ‘men are stronger’). My best friend’s mum was easily irritated and regular hit me, my friend and her sisters as a job lot when she was having a bad day. It didn’t bother me and was just ‘what she did’. This was mid-70s to mid-80s. More worrying than a smack however was the threat of getting one so it was used mainly as a control measure, certainly by my parents.

One of my teachers would regularly hit me over the knuckles, hard, with a ruler because I was bad at needlework. My mum would stab my sister and I with a fork if we put our elbows on the table during dinner. That really hurt! My riding teacher would hit me on my back with a crop of if I didn’t sit up straight and my ballet teacher would ‘chop’ me between the shoulder blades for the same reason (I clearly had problems with my posture).

Bloody loved my childhood, however, and I’d do anything to go back to those times. Raw but real: we knew where we stood because we had the comfort of knowing the adults were in charge. We just had to make sure we didn’t wind them up! Oddly there was no notion that the beatings might be causing us any kind of trauma, and personally I don’t feel they did.

Not in my world. I was born in 1966. Was never hit by either parent. Nor were most of my friends so far as I knew. Certainly my 3 best friends (who I’m still friends with now) were not.

Nor were my parents ever hit, according to what they told me. Born in 1940.

My DH wax born in 1868. He was never hit by his parents either. Not was his mother. I don’t know about his father.

My DH was born in 1968. Not 1868!

Born 68, children were hit over the knuckles with a ruler for not knowing their times tables at 6, I even at that young age thought it was awful even though my own parents did smack us.
our Headmaster at primary school always had a Tawse (belt) over his shoulder.
My mum once slapped me so hard she had a worse bruise Han me, years later I teased her about it, other than that I came from a loving home and never disciplined my children with violence.

It was very common. My husband and his brothers born in the 1960s got up to all sorts - including attempting to demolish the outside loo with sledgehammers as youngish children - and they got beaten with some regularity. My own grandmother apparently biffed a poker at her children if she was annoyed - all the family had excellent reflexes.

Born mid 70s and never hit, neither was my brother. Never heard about or saw friends being hit either.

The cane was occasionally used at school but mostly as a deterrent. I only remember 1 boy ever getting it.

Funnily enough I got a branch Spring back and whip me on the bottom today whilst gardening and it stung like he'll, even through a padded coat! Made me imagine how painful a thin strap on bare skin must have been - awful!

Nope, mine didn’t, thank goodness.

Very rarely in my family. It was held up as the ultimate punishment when you'd done something very naughty. My parents stopped before I was seven because they'd noticed it didn't deter me; it made me angrier and I just behaved even worse. (Mum had a psychology degree, and paid attention to cause and effect!)

Being paddled at school with a table tennis bat was also reserved for the very worst behaviour. I only knew of another child getting the paddle about twice a year.

Yes (and teachers still caned). It wasn't seen as violence, it was seen as an appropriate reprimand for bad behaviour. See also: dogs being trained on a choke chain.

I was born early 70s My parents divorced when I was 5. Mum hit frequently and at times without reason. My father has never hit me.

I asked my older sister once if he ever hit her. She said once where she had been difficult and they had gone in circles for a long time he had given her a light smack. But it was "nothing like mum did"

My paternal aunt said their parents never hit. I can imagine that to be true as both were very mild mannered people.
My maternal grandparents both hit their children. Both grandparents were raising their children in the 40s and 50s

I grew up in Scandinavia and smacking in schools were not allowed from the late 60s