Curious about the 40's and 50's.

I hardly remember the forties, but I grew up in southern England in the fifties, on into the early sixties. It would have amazed me if there had been any question of a boy or girl getting spanked by someone who wasn't family, though the Headmaster could still use a cane.

However, by 1959 I could fantasize about spanking my plump-bottomed science and maths teacher!

I grew up in the fifties and sixties, and Goodgulf really put his finger on the nature of the changes since then. When I was young, everyone knew everyone in the neighborhood. Television in the fifties was not widely owned, and programming was very limited, so there was much more social interaction with your neighbors. Everyone shopped at the local stores (there being no malls to speak of), and the flow of kids, in and out of their friends houses was commonplace.

With such pervasive webs of interaction, neighborhoods were much tighter, crime was much lower (if everyone knew who you were and was familiar with your reputation, getting away with small larcenies, much less large ones, was much more difficult), consequences were more certain and shame was more closely linked with bad actions. That being said, there were permissive parents as well as strict parents, easy teachers as well as tough teachers, but because of the social interactions these things balanced out a little more than they do now.

In my circle, I don't recall one parent spanking another parent's child, unless give care of that child for a period of time. It really was not necessary, at least in my case, because if I got into trouble with one of my friends, that friend's mother knew that all it would take is a phone call to my mother and the problem would be handled.

Certainly during the 40's and 50's in UK it was not unusual for relatives or parents of friends to spank kids who offended. You would never complain to your own parents as it might mean a second spanking!

There was also much casual violence in schools quite apart from the headmaster and his cane. The teachers had licence to do just about anything they pleased.

The fifties and sixties were a time when spanking was accepted in the USA as punishment for children and teens to an extent. A threat took care of the matter but I have known several teacher's who employed a paddle or spanking to resolve issues, with parent consent. A good friend told me she suffered a hand spanking from her dad on porch one afternoon, she was mortified because he picked up her dress, not usual but memorable.

I went to school in the southern U.S in the mid 50s through late 60s. School spanking, while not all that common, was always at the teacher's disposal. But it was actually used more as a threat than actually employed. Of course, that varied from teacher to teacher. But they could pretty much discipline kids as they saw fit with very little fear of repercussions. The one seemingly unwritten rule was that girls were immune from corporal punishment except in very rare instances, and that at the early grade school level only.

That changed somewhat in the 70s, especially at the middle school level. Once dresses and skirts were no longer required and girls were allowed to wear pants to school, they became subjected to paddling at an almost equal rate as the boys were. Whether this was a result of the changing dress code or just the changing times with regard to equal rights, etc. I was never sure of. Of course, since then all paddling has pretty much become a thing of the past in our local schools.

As far as a parent spanking a kid who did not belong to them, if that ever happened with anyone I knew, I was totally unaware of it. I don't think it happened here with any regularity. You might hear a parent say something like "so and so" needs a good spanking. Or something like, "I'd like to turn 'so and so' over my knee and teach them a good lesson." But I don't know of a single incident where it did unless it was a relative like an aunt or uncle.

I grew up in the '70's and I can remember a teacher casually telling a mother that if any of the kids got out of hand she just slapped them. She did, too! Although I managed to avoid it by behaving. I heard a DJ here say that he was once smacked in public for acting up by a woman they didn't even know and when his mother questioned it her reply was 'It's alright, I'm a teacher.' Nothing came of it, and the person telling the story admitted that he probably deserved it, but I'm sure now she'd be arrested. I was once threatened by the mother of a friend that she'd use her wooden spoon on me if I didn't eat all my dinner when I was staying over there. She was joking, but friends of he and his brothers did get that wooden spoon across their backsides if she felt they deserved it.

One way to look at another period of time is to look at the entertainment it produced. A while ago I shared a link here to some old comics. The comics, found at http://www.fawcettcomic.com/mary.php , are about Mary Marvel and don't really any on topic material but does show a long forgotten attitude.

Mary Marvel's a superhero whose age is a bit elastic in these comics. She's a teenage girl, but the comics show her as being a young teen in one issue and an older teen in others. Regardless, she's a teenage girl and treated as such. She has solved countless crimes and always turns out to be right, but if she accuses an adult without catching them in the act then either she has solid proof or no one believes her. Here's a common exchange:
Teen Superhero: Officer, that man is a robber! He has the loot in his pocket!
Man: What? I don't know what she's talking about but she's making me late for my work.
Police Officer: Now Mary, you know better than keep a man away from his job, don't you?

A random adult's word verse the word of a teen superhero - and the adult is believed because he is an adult.

That site had dozens of different old comics - and all of them show the attitudes of their day. Adults and authority figures were to be respected and obeyed. Children were raised to mind their elders. Second class citizens were clearly second class (or worse). And if a youth got out of line then maybe a cop would "straighten the kid out", usually in a way that isn't on topic and best explained to onlookers as "he fell down some stairs".

Goodgulf

Here's a memory from the 70s. There was someone in my grade whose mother was a music teacher and who volunteered to come in and help with music lessons - this would have been grade 2 or 3. At one point the mother was at the front of the room, talking to the teacher, and the subject of discipline came up. The mother/volunteer music teacher's reply was something like:
You don't have to tell me about that. I've lost count of the number of wooden spoons I've broken with my kids.

Of course the room broke out laughing with one kid wanting to die of embarrassment. The mother tried to cover by saying something like:
I mean I break them by banging them on the banister at the bottom of the stairs, calling them down for supper.
- but that fooled no one.

As a music teacher the woman was firm at times and we had no problems picturing her using a wooden spoon. One of stories, The Piano Teacher, is partly inspired by her.

Goodgulf

A lot of the comics of the day featured spankings, too. I think the Katzenjammer Kids were alwayse getting spanked. Down here Ginger Meggs had plenty of encounters with his father's belt and his mother's wooden spoon. They were never shown, but they were spoken about and the reader was left in no doubt that they took place.

Although I grew up in a big city, it really was its' own community, primarily Irish and Catholic. Some of my friends were daughters of my mother's or father's childhood friends. Everybody knew each other, but I never heard or witnessed a neighbor spanking another's child. There were plenty of school spankings, but very few phone calls home. Eventually, though a parent might discover their kid was spanked through neighborhood gossip. When that happened, parents never questioned Father's or Sister's right to discipline their son or daughter.
Teens, as far as I know were not spanked, at least not that I heard. Although I understand the priests in the boys Catholic Highschool still used paddles as late as the 70's. When I began teaching in the mid/late 70's there was still spanking going on in elementary schools. I remember parents coming in to meet me and afterward graciously giving me permission to spank their child. By the early 80's spanking was outlawed in Maryland. I think generally in today's society spanking is considered an anachronism. There is little data that indicates it changes behavior in the long run. There are, on the other hand plenty of behavior modification books and programs out there available for parents that are very effective.