Was spanking/smacking common in the 1990s? Struggling with PIL

[onlyonsunday]

Found out recently that FIL would spank/smack/hit DH, until DH was age 11/12. FIL only stopped when DH got big and strong.

These weren't awful 'hidings' and didn't result in injury or broken skin. DH had to lay across FIL's lap and he would hit his bum over his clothes so no bare skin.

DH is totally unfazed by this and says it didn't do any harm. I have never known anyone hit their children in any way and am horrified. This would have been between 1985-1995. Was it fairly normal then? Or was this unusual?

There are other things in DH's childhood that I find horrifying, so I know my feelings on the spanking will be influenced by the other stuff.

So looking for thoughts on how this would have been viewed at the time.

TLDR: was spanking deemed normal as recently as 1995?

Edited to say: this is in the UK

Yes I was smacked as a child, slapped when I was older. Born in the late 1980s. Im not sure if my brothers were smacked but I assume so. I also had my mouth washed out with soap. It was part of a bigger pattern of neglect and abuse.

Very normal in my lower middle class world, I’m the same age and was smacked very regularly. It only stopped when I smacked back k about age 14. I think it’s horrifying too

No, I was born 1981 and have two younger siblings, we were never smacked.
I do think it was reasonably common then though - but I could tell my mum always disapproved when she heard about kids being smacked.

My parents both 50s born and both smacked, by their mums though never their Dads, and it was always “just” a smack on the bottom nothing more - anything more would have been viewed as excessive even then. Kids being caned at school in the 60s was normal too although my parents never were

Just hit the little ones, then

I'm using the same logic as the pro-hitting kids brigade. But they don't like it when it's turned back on them.

Hitting a kid because you've got your own trauma and lost your temper needs intensive therapy and close monitoring to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Hitting a kid because you "believe in it" and are purposely choosing to hit, I can't see how you cure that, so you shouldn't have, or be around kids. So you can keep removing kids from the home at birth or prevent any more births.

It's nothing to do with you?!?

Yes, same for us. DH and I would not have dared say we were in trouble in school as we would have received more punishment at home. Caning ended in Sheffield in the late 70s I think, but the word hadn’t reached our craft teachers. If boys messed around in woodwork or metalwork they were hit. Not usually girls, but in the mid 70s in junior school snacking was common.

The last time my DM smacked me was when I was 17 and was rude to her. She slapped me across the face and my glasses fell off. She did apologise. My uni friend’s mum dished out punishment using the back of a hair brush. My uncle took the belt to my 14 year old cousin when the police brought him home after getting into some trouble when he should have been in school. All those instances were pretty common in the 70s and 80s at least. I think things were shifting in the 90s. I had DS1 in 2000 and I was determined not to smack- although I did a couple of times. My SIL routinely smacked DNs in the 2000s.

We were smacked (fairly gently) in the 1990s and my mum was a social worker! No issues as adults. I think it’s a dramatic overreaction to judge your PiL because they used to smack their children three decades ago. Lots of things were normal then that aren’t acceptable now. In thirty years’ time future generations will doubtless be horrified at the choices we make today. That’s history for you.

I l was smacked on occasion growing up. Not constantly. I was a well behaved child. It was 80S/early 90s. I don’t really think about it. It didn’t impact me personally. I don’t have terrible memories or anything. I wasn’t scared of my parents. Personal experience of course.

I don't mean this to sound patronising as I'm generally intrigued - why are you unable to use words or actions (that don't involve inflicting physical pain) to "train" your child, as so many of us on this thread are capable of doing?

Ah ok - I thought you were endorsing / repeating abusive logic yourself. Rather than just weaponising it.

I don't think you can easily separate hitting because of trauma and hitting because you believe in it though. How many people who "believe in" hitting their kids weren't hit as kids themselves?

I've managed to train seven naughty terriers very effectively with mostly just my words and a few treats/toys, so it really does boggle the mind that parents can't "train" kids without hitting them.

Born mid-80s and raised in the UK by Irish immigrants. Me and my siblings got hit regularly, and absolutely battered occasionally until we were teens.

I was raised in the 90s and was smacked in the way you describe. So was almost everyone I knew. I never mentioned getting a smacked bum and had a shocked reaction, let alone “horrified”. It was also common for parents to smack hands or slap legs. Anything beyond that would have been seen as abnormal.

born 81 and both my brother and i were smacked.

I'm not remotely traumatised by it.. my mother was quite adamant about giving us warnings. so by the time she DID smack us, it was very much our own fault for pushing it that far.

First offence - asked to stop
second offence - told to stop and warning issued that if we did it again she would smack us (bum, flat of hands & over clothes)
third offence - follow through with the threat and smacked us once quite firmly.

I can remember maybe 3 occasions she actually smacked me.. after that i learned to stop on the warning.

I had my two in 1991 and 1992. Some people still used smacking, especially the “gentle tap on the bum” or “tapping the hand” but there was a sizeable number of non-smackers (I was one).

Reading this thread, I think it's also a North/South thing. The vast majority of people I know in the North and Wales were hit in the 90s. A lot in the North still hitting now, albeit most of them have at least the conscience to know it's wrong. In the South East where I used to live there were more "gentle parents". I don't agree with gentle parenting either but it's not abuse.

born 1987. Normal to be hit in my household. I’m completely unbothered by it as an adult

90s child here, was smacked with spoons and similar. I've no I'll affect from that bit of the otherwise atrocious parenting I received. As with another poster I was given plenty of warnings.

I was born in 1985 and was smacked throughout whole childhood including the 90s. I can't really remember when it stopped but I do have vivid memories of the smacking. I don't really know how I feel about it now, I do know I would never smack my own children. My mum was a single mum and the 80s/ 90s were tough times for her, she had also been parented in a way that meant she couldn't regulate her own emotions, let alone teach 2 little people how to do it.

That happened at our school, except the boy was hit. This absolutely wasn't universal though. I spent one term at this middle school (so I'd be 8/9) and I was terrified and my fingers were raw because I bit all the skin off them. My parents moved me to a different school and this sort of thing never happened.

I was smacked once or twice my my mum but not in some weird pre-meditated way....just a smack on the bottom because I was being a nuisance. I was smacked on the hand with a ruler at primary school because my friend encouraged me to steal a sweet. It was always "She told me to do it!!" :)

It was certainly normal all through the 80s and I would presume into some of the 90s too (although I was in my teens then so it didn’t apply to me). I remember seeing a parent smack their child (as OP describes, not a beating, just a smack on the bottom over clothing) outside my house one day in about 2004 and I remember thinking that it seemed out of place by then - not concerning at that point just not the done thing any more. It was a really nice family too, which surprised me. So by the mid 2000s it must have been well on its way out. I guess the mid 90s were where it was being questioned more.

Lots of people manage to recognise that hitting isn't right even after being hit. Partly because it's extremely difficult, in this day and age, NOT to know that it's wrong. Any HV, social worker, teacher or medical professional will tell you, and if you don't believe them, there's analyses and meta-analyses very easy to access and easy to read, and summaries of them in newspapers and magazines. You can even get AI to summarise the research for you and have it read it out to you. The only excuse for not knowing is that you don't want to know. And if you don't want to know, or if you do know and still don't believe it, what can possibly be done? They can't and won't be educated and they are not safe to have children. They have no intention of breaking the cycle so the only option is to stop the cycle.

Removal and adoption is traumatic, sterilisation is traumatic, but at least if someone is sterilised, only they are traumatised and not a child.

I was hit as a child in the 80s. It was generally seen a culturally acceptable. 40 years is a long time and society has progressed. I'd be appalled if a modern parent did this.

Banned in private schools in 1998.... (Although I'm not sure it actually happened up until then).