Bonanza 1964

This was perfectly acceptable mainstream primetime television in March 1964, which sort of indicates the social acceptability of such practices back then, even though the programme is supposedly set around 1860. Also noting that Bonanza was a liberal inclined programme that did not shy away from tackling many social issues of 1964, like racism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-YKuPyMig

I remember being rather excited as a young lad when this appeared on TV back then.

It was probably a pretty mild spanking compared to the standards of the mid to late 1800s. When you consider the violence and sexual scenes we regularly see on TV and in the movies, I wonder why spanking is seen as taboo even in these so-called enlightened times.

The rise of the feminist movement in the 1960s killed off the Hollywood spankings as most of them involved men punishing grown women like children, as in McClintock and Captain Lightfoot.

The bodice-ripper novels have now largely been purged of spanking scenes for the same reasons also since the new millennia.

More so than the feminist movement, which in the Sixties was considered a fringe movement associated with the hippies, peaceniks, yippies, etc, was that people in the tv and movie industry had realized the sexual undertones present in spankings of mature women and decided it was not acceptable.
The last tv spanking I remember was the offscreen(so disappointing!) of a spoiled teenage girl by Robert Culp on I Spy in 1966. They well may decided to make it offscreen because she was wearing a sexy pair of tight-fitting pants!

Redskinluver

Considering how permissiveness and soft-porn expanded in mainstream cinema during the 1960s I am not sure it was the "sexual undertones" of spanking that caused its gradual disappearance over the same period.

I think it was more that woman being punished like children became unacceptable, under pressure from the growing feminist movement.

Spanking of children also disappeared from films and comics and is even sometimes erased in new editions of old books. That presumably is due to the growing awareness of child abuse and the sexual connotations of spanking rather than pressure from the feminist movement.

Just looked at the Bonanza clip. While usually a fan of CP, not in this case. Based on just the clip, I'm seeing a "white" young woman, regardless of the reasons why, was raised by a Native American tribe and then for some reason, most likely against her will, given to a "white" family. Of course she's going to resist and not cooperate. Anyone would. Yes, judging by the clip, the "white" men tried to be patient with her BUT since it's dipicting a period & is filmed in a period where "whites" were trying to irrdicate native americans by white washing them; a better method should have been found by Pa Cartwright.

Whilst child spanking has disappeared from children's books, it hasn't from many mainstream novels when it forms part of the plot. If a mainstream novel is set in the last century or before and seeks to be realistic then omitting spanking references would be historically inaccurate.

IBrosse6
I agree that omitting spanking references makes books historically inaccurate but it happens. I picked up a recent edition of an Enid Blyton in which some parents were criticising their neighbours' lack of discipline of their children. The father then said that he had given his own son 'a good telling-off' the previous night. I thought, really? So found an older edition in which the boy received rather more than a telling-off.

KatiePie

The problem is that censoring history is a two edged sword. Protecting people's contemporary sensibilities might seem a good thing, but how can you learn from the past if it looks like the present?