Curious about the 40's and 50's.

As a child of the 50s, growing up in small town America, I was no stranger to the widespread use of spanking, strapping and paddling as the main method employed by adults to discipline their children at both home and school. I was hand spanked until seven years of age, at which time my father bought a razor strop from a barber shop supply house, with which he would thoroughly tan my bare hide on a fairly regular basis right up to when I left for college. At school, there was always a trusty "board of education" to punish any student whose behavior was deemed unruly. At least in that case, I was afforded the protection of two layers of clothing, though the holes in the thick wood ensured that after three to five swats I would be sporting a "bulls-eye" bruise on each of my "sit spots" for the next couple of days. After a paddling, it was never fun to try to sit still in those hard wooden or moulded plastic seats that went together with the school desks. BTW, back then "fidgeting" was considered one of those unruly behaviors that could earn you a quick return trip to the office for another meeting with the "board." What I most vividly remember is the vicious cycle I would often find myself in. If I got paddled at school, I could expect a good bakers dozen at home with the strop that evening, Whenever my dad saw a fresh pair of "bull-eyes" he wouldn't even try to avoid them. Oh no, he would go right for them. The next day at school, the challenge was to try to find that one patch of bottom that I could sit perfectly still on and thus perhaps break the seemingly endless cycle of punishment. In addition to all this, I could also be spanked on the spot by any other parent in the neighborhood, if they thought I was misbehaving with their children, because my parents had granted "spanking rights" to all my friends' parents. It didn't happen that often but it did happen. Needless to say, growing up at that time, my young butt didn't remain unmarked for very long. I wonder how any of today's youth would have fared.

I guess the one thing I should be grateful for. If I had grown up in the U.K. instead of America at that time, I would have been caned! OMG!

Having been born in 1949 the 50's and 60's were rather interesting to me..LOL. I also grew up in a small farming community where people worked hard and spanked their sons and daughters when necessary. School's also paddled both boys and girls if necessary and parents backed the school up by sometimes spanking again at home.

Girls as I said were not immune to being paddled granted not as often as the boys but even in high school girls felt the sting of "The Board of Education" 10-12 times in a school year.

I personally loved growing up in the 50's and 60's when the world was a good place.

JCP

Corporal punishment was common in those days, some of it very harsh. I remember a neighbor woman about 30 years old spanking her little boy with a strap and another neighbor recommending that she use the buckle end rather than the leather end so he would feel it more.

i was born in the early 50's and while i do know there was spanking in the neighbor's houses i can not say that i ever saw anybody spank someone else's child. the schools could paddle, but i was never in that group that had first hand experience. There was spanking at my house, but it was not excessive. indeed i came to the conclusion that spanking was more common due to the movies and television series of the time as well as the newspaper comic strips that i had found. i imagine if a time traveller based his findings on those items there was a whole lot of spanking going on and would love to live in that time if he was a spanko. i cannot say that i encountered any neighbors that did get spanked in front of anybody as it was mostly a private affair from what i heard and nobody really talked about getting spanked. So like in every era there was probally more suppostion than fact, but it made for great fantasies. Thank you.
Jim

"growing up in the 50s and 60s when the world was a good place." Well,I grew up then too, and it was not that rosecolored.
We lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation-this was the height of the Cold War. At home , there was the paranoid anti-communism of the McCarthy era which cast its shadow over our social discourse, Anyone with dissenting or unpopular opinions was subject to being labeled "Red." And of course the Vietnam War came along and guys had to worry about being drafted and sent to their death in Southeast Asia.
There was the racial turmoil of that era, the repression of gay people, and a general stress on conformity and materialism.
It was what we think of as "the 60s" that came about in reaction to the world of the 50s and early 60s, in social, cultural and political arenas.
Rock and roll, Elvis in the 50s and then the Beatles-youth rebellion. And of course the civil right movement, first for racial justice, and then for other groups outside the mainstream. A widening of freedom of expression-the existence of this very board has that to thank. More openness about sexuality in all its forms.
Yes, I am glad I was around then , to see all that. But like every period in history it was not perfect.