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

You can't get your kid's attention without hitting them? I hope your sons have someone else to guide them so they learn better parenting than that!

I was smacked as a child born late 80s so would have been in the 90s. Dad had anger issues due to severe pain and depression- I don't hold it against him at all- it did affect me, particularly when in trouble/being told off at work in an office alone- as that feeling deffo still comes back. I wouldn't do it to my child though....

Normal in the late 80s and into the 90s. Not great, or something I have ever done to my DC but definitely commonplace at the time.

Yes. I am an 80s born child and I was punished with smacking, sometimes with a slipper or belt too if I’d been particularly naughty. It was always pants down over the knee on bare bum. It didn’t matter who was looking either.

It wasn’t full scale abusive beatings and I did respect my parents (feared them!). It was the utter humiliation of it that made me vow never to smack my own DC.

I’ve always maintained that it never did me any harm but in fact I think it did but it’s hard to tell as my relationship with my parents is complex.

I have never smacked my own DC. I am also strict (to a degree) with them over certain things but I feel I have a good relationship with my 3 teens. We laugh and joke about all the taboo subjects my parents would never have tolerated. They talk to me about things I would not have dreamed talking to my parents about.

I don’t believe I’m a better parent than my parents, it was different times. However, I do think this generation have more involved parents than our latch key kids era.

I was born in '86, my brother in '84. Both my brother and i would be smacked if we were naughty. It was never questioned and a single, opened handed smack on the bottom or thigh was considered an appropriate punishment. We weren't often very bad and it didn't happen often or at all past the age of 10. I was led to believe that it was the usual and all parents did it, it didn't do me any harm either. My parents didn't believe in grounding, so smacking or withholding toys/food was the only punishments my parents were able to dish out. I never considered it as hitting or beating and implements (belt, slipper) were never used. My husband went to boarding school in the 80"s and they were slippered, usually with their own slipper. If they didnt have hard soled slippers it was done with the masters slipper.

It was a completely normal way to discipline children, both in homes and schools, for most of recorded human history. We had caning in my school well into the 1990s (private school, went on after it was banned in state schools). Can only remember it being used three times. But the threat was enough to make us behave.

This has been an interesting thread.

We were smacked, 80s/90s. Honestly I don't think it did me any harm, not even when it went too far and became a bit of a beating. But I dont think it did anything other than vent mum's rage. There is other abuse and negative experience in my youth and I grew up in a family/council estate with a reasonable amount of domestic violence/alcoholism etc so I'm probably not a reliable barometer.
Working class Yorkshire if that makes a difference?

I think probably less common by the late 90’s, but 70’s and 80’s you’d get a clip round the ear from any adult that had an interest in your behaviour, aunts, uncles, neighbours, friends parents - and whats more your own parents would thank them for doing it! Seems mad now, but I think communities all knew each other much better back then - if you'd been up to no good your mum knew about it before you got home!
One of my cousins favourite stories of his late teens is being chased round the garden by our gran with a broom when he’d been caught doing something she didn’t approve of.
I was always very well behaved so never earned her wrath in that way!

Absolutely not! I was a child in the 60s and it happened v rarely to me then. I perpetrated no violence against my kids in the 90s and don’t know anyone who did (or at least who admitted to it!)

I am 62 and was never smacked, neither was my Mum.
My boys, born in the 80s never were and were well behaved, they were taught respect and love. I don't know any of my friends who hit their kids.

I was born in 1994 and my brother in 1991 and we were both smacked regularly, with hands and also with things like wooden spoons, shoe horns etc. We were also given the silent treatment for days on end, similar to a previous poster

Born 1983 and sister 1986, always smacked as kids. Was normal amongst peers. It did teach me that if someone annoyed you then you hit them. It’s not affected my relationship with parents, it’s just something we disagree on.

Yes I was smacked, born in the 80s. But it was the threat of it that I remember more than the actual act. And to be honest it’s the times my dad lost his temper completely and screamed, shouted, kicked furniture over etc that stuck with me the most. It happened maybe a handful of times but I vividly remember being terrified. Much worse than being smacked which at least was a punishment and not usually done in lost temper anger.

I was smacked regularly, and called horrific names. Slag, slit, whore..

It stopped when I was around 14/15 when my mother attempted to hit me again for literally just getting on her nerves and she got one back twice as hard. The names didn’t stop until I moved out at 17. I self harmed at one point so then was called slasher, I had an eating disorder so then a song was made up which her and my younger siblings sang at me. She denies all this but my siblings remember the song.

If you can hit, then you can get one back. This was the 90s.

I remember visiting friends and seeing them get smacked, it was humiliating.

My ex MIL asked if she could smack my ds and she was told no, then wasn’t allowed to see him on her own ever.

Yes parenting was different. The removal of corporal punishment in schools was in the the mid 80s (roughly), change takes time, so parenting styles at home took a while longer to catch up - especially where the internet wasn't as widely used.

It doesn't make your PIL's monsters, they just did what they knew and was probably common around them with other parents. Your dh says he is not traumatised by it so no issue there.

My parents, especially my mum was prone to smacking to discipline small children - it was done by most parents with good intentions, it was the way they knew to teach their children to behave/comply to be safe etc (of course there will always be those who abused it).

For me what it meant was I didn't let my mum babysit ds, again not because I though she was some sort of monster, she only knew old fashioned parenting and found it difficult to adapt as she got older, I just didn't want that for my ds.

In the UK corporal punishment became illegal in state schools in 1986. In 1998 in independent schools, but by that time, influenced by legislation, it was pretty much over anyway.

Definitely normal. Everyone I know was smacked.

Yes, it was common, but it was still a terrible and fucked up technique. The long term research has been done and it's now known to be associated with lower IQ in parents and bad outcomes, so anyone still doing it has absolutely no excuse. And while it was common, there were still plenty of parents who didn't do it, so it's not as if nobody knew.

And I'll just go there now and say anyone who is furious about being denied their "right" to have at kids' bums needs their hard drive checked as well.

No, I didn't think they were 😄

Early 80s baby here. Yes, I was smacked by both parents, mostly my mum. One day I turned round and slapped her back and she never dared do it again. Soap in the mouth for swearing (I still swear like a fucking trooper so that was pointless). Hand scrubbed with the nail brush for writing a note on my hand in pen in class. I remember being at a school friends house and her mum smacked her in front of us so I guess it was fairly common.

I've got young kids and can't imagine ever treating them like that. I do judge my parents heavily for it.

I think the '90's would have been right on the cusp of when it stopped happening. Certainly it was common for mid to late eighties parenting methods.

I had my first child mid-nineties and I know I felt torn because I think a quick wallop was still to my mind, an effective way of getting a child to stop doing X or Y but I also knew there was a big groundswell of opinion that it was bad. I'm nearly sixty now and I still think a parent should be able to mete out an instant and proportional one-off wallop/ smack where necessary. Say a child was messing about with something metal and poking it near a toaster- I would probably not hesitate.

I was born in the late 70’s and was never hit. I had a school friend who was belted though so I’d say it depends on the parent.

My mother used to threaten to wash my mouth out with soap but never did. A friend's mother did do it to her and now wonders why her daughter lives on another continent and never wants to talk to her.

My brother and I were born late 70s/early 80's and were both smacked by our parent's (nothing abusive just what was considered "normal" then), they had my sister early 90's and I only ever recall them tapping her hand when she was about 3 it wasn't actually smacking, they never smacked her on the legs/bum like they did with my brother and I, I think times had changed. If you ever suggested we'd smacked our children now to my parents they would have an absolute fit!! Times moved on, my parent's see it was wrong looking back.

They grew up being caned at school though, having hard board dusters lobbed at their heads etc, you can kind of see why that generation just carried it on when a teacher was allowed to beat you with a stick for the most minor thing. My mum went to a convent school run by nuns, my mum told me she was beaten because she couldn't remember the words to a Latin prayer when asked. Awful. Both my parents admitted they felt scared at school, wild to think that it was acceptable once upon a time.

People still do it now.