What did you get hit for growing up?

[Solauren]

By Parents
Mom: Occasional swats on the ass (I've tripped and landed harder) for not paying attention and repeatedly doing stuff I wasn't supposed to. When it was discovered I had a hearing problem, and wasn't ignoring her, those ended. (Since yelling actually worked)

Dad: About 2 years old, ran out towards the road to go see the train. I was picked up, smacked on the ass twice, and then explained why it was bad (apparently, trains don't stop for people, and neither do cars).

Also, once on the hands (with force, I was 6) when I was attempting to dismantle an electrical socket, what the fridge was plugged into....

Grandfather: Once for not listening and nearly wrecking an electrical appliance.

I was never smacked hard enough to leave a mark on purpose before I was a teenager. Now, when I was a teenager, mom used to hit me on the shoulder on occasion, and she had to do it hard otherwise I'd ignore her. When she started hurting her hand doing it (without it bothering me), I started listening again. When she figured out I was ignoring her to irritate her, she found other ways to get me to co-operate. That's when she masters the art of the guilt trip.


I was hit once by a non-family member (my family members all knew the rules on smacking me and my sister - hand or ass as approprite, not hard enough to leave a mark unless the impact was also meant to save our life, etc).

I was about 4, and the babysiters boyfriend took his belt to me. When my parents found out, they told the babysitter straight out: The boyfriend was not allowed over anymore, period. (They were also friends with the babysitter). I've heard the odd hint that the boyfriend was informed that if he came near us again, as in within sight, it would be bad for him. (I'm assuming as in charges, but who knows).

My parents did not believe in using objects to smack their kids (unless you cut a rolled up news paper to block us hitting each other with toy weapons), and were of the thought 'if you are hitting hard enough to leave a mark beyond the kid tripping, you're not doing a good job as a parent'.

[Surlethe]

I got spanked with a wooden spoon for being disobedient or disrespectful. My parents at one point instituted a "mark system", where my Mom would place on a whiteboard a tic mark for every spankable offense, and then I or my siblings would be punished when my Dad came home. The first day of use, I accumulated four marks for generally (IIRC) being a lazy bum. Dad got home, I got four swats on the ass. I never got more than one mark in a day after that.

[Losonti Tokash]

1) If my father was drunk or high, which was often.
2) If I cried at all for being hit.
3) If I argued with my stepfather, he would try to choke me.
4) My mother would give me a slap if I legitimately deserved it, but she always felt terrible about it almost immediately.
5) It was generally the first resort if I broke any rules while my father was home.

[Havok]

Heh. My Mom whooped my ass good when she brought me home from the police station for shoplifting and when I was arrested at school for breaking and entering and she brought me home from the police station again.

Most of your parents fucking sucked. I only got it when I REALLY deserved it. And no, 'maybe if she hit you before that stuff happened' would not have worked. I was 10 and 11 respectively when it happened and there were no warning signs or anything lame like that, I wasn't acting out or rebelling. Just bad decision making on my part and friend influence. Plus I was pretty much already my own person at that point, being a latch key kid from about 3rd Grade on.

[Ford Prefect]

I was got the crap beaten out of me after attacking some blonde asshole for implying that Kamille is a girl's name

Actually seriously, I only ever really got hit once, and that was after I implied that my dad was a lazy bum that was on holiday all the time (it's an impression I had when I was younger because whenever I visited him he never worked, for months at a time). It was pretty half-hearted though, I think he was more upset than angry and I felt sorry for him afterwards. I can't recall any other occassions of getting hit, but I didn't really act up much as kid, and when I did I'd stop after a harsh word or two.

[Havok]

Your name is Kamille? You parents should have beaten themselves.

Thinking about it more, my Mom did use the fear of hitting me quite often. She would threaten to 'GET THE WOODEN SPOON!' and would shake a kitchen drawer furiously causing me to run and do exactly what I was supposed to be doing frantically. I guess I was kinda like a dog in that respect.

[frogcurry]

Smacked once for striking my mother in the face. It wasn't intentional but I couldn't prove it and I didn't see the point of arguing it since I was guilty of stupidity if nothing else. That was about it.

[Mayabird]

Does it count as hitting if it was my hand swatted away before three year old me could touch a heated stove top or poison ivy or a snapping turtle? It's more a protective than disciplinary move in those cases when there's not enough time to tell the idiot offspring to stop and walk away, assuming she even has enough functioning brain to do so.

[Haruko]

Heh, my mom was never violent, but my step-dad and his dad were your standard violent drunks. That said, I got hit for coming home from school one day (had to hide in a neighbor's house). I got hit so hard I could have sworn I was gonna die when I broke a coffee maker while my dad was sleeping. I got hit by my step-dad's dad for watching the tele in the living room when he wanted to watch the tele. In other words, I had violence used against me not as a tool for discipline, but on a whim.

[Shrykull]

You see, hitting kids is not so bad, so long as it is moderate -for more of a psychological effect rather than a physical one. For me, it was the belt.

With children (just as with animals, but especially since they're developing humans), it is important to establish boundaries. It's sad that this ongoing trend of not hitting children no-matter-what is just giving us a bunch of disrespectful kids and teenagers as a result. That is not good, especially for them.

Whoa, Mike would have a field day on this one. It's come up a few times actually, more than once. I've been looking for some of the research that he's talked about that says professionals say that hitting your kids, even moderately can cause them to grow up to be violent and unruly adults. Certainly the ones who get beat often and hard do definitely turn out to be violent adults. Ever heard of this guy. Richard Kuklinski mafia hit man. I know it's wikipedia, but if you read it says you'll see what the severe abuse did to him. I'd like to find some studies which look at moderate discipline and how the children grow up to be. I have looked hard (I have a bookmarks folder in firefox on it) but I haven't found anything good.

Why, you may ask? As a psychologist, I can tell you that at a very young ages, it is pretty much useless trying to reason and cut deals with children. The mistake is that we're trying to deal with them as if they were adults (which they're not), and, just like any other superior animal (think mammals and avians), they will try new behaviours and seek out where the boundaries are. Your responsibility, as a parent, is to try and help your child become the best kind of person he/she can, as far as you can go before he/she becomes an adult.

Ok, so you ARE a professional and you think hitting your kids is ok? Isn't there research to the contrary?

Your parental authority, derived from such responsibility, is NOT SUBJECT TO NEGOTIATION. If you tell your kid not to do something because you're seriously convinced it's not good for him/her, that is that. Or are you going to debate whether or not drugs are good for him/her?

Drugs are a good reason definitely to DISCIPLINE your child. But, flaunting your authority definitely doesn't help. My father was raised in a strict family, and this "You do anything I say, when I say, how I say" just tended to totally piss me off and encourage rebellion. Absolute unquestioned authority just creates tension. I still really don't like him even though I'm an adult now.

Of course, there's the added effect of feeling you've lost your parent's approval, at least for some time.

I didn't lose my father's approval. Actually, I started to devalue him and think of him as inferior and an idiot for what he did. I didn't care about whether he approved or not.

If you think hitting a child for any reason is hideous, what do you think of kids who hit and physically hurt their parents, who call them names, who dismiss all instructions they give them or who treat then like dirt otherwise?

I suppose you could do something else. Send him to reform school, or call the police rather than hit him/her. I never hit my parents, except my mom once when I was five years old.

As a mental exercise: what would you do if your kid called you an asshole (provided you know that he/she knows what the word means)?

I've done that, and a lot worse. I've even told my father I wished he was dead more than once when I was a child. It was the hitting and discipline for reasons I didn't think I deserved it that made me just more angry. I was generally a good person, even as a kid, but there were some things I think went beyond discipline and were too strict.

[J]

Does it count as hitting if it was my hand swatted away before three year old me could touch a heated stove top or poison ivy or a snapping turtle? It's more a protective than disciplinary move in those cases when there's not enough time to tell the idiot offspring to stop and walk away, assuming she even has enough functioning brain to do so.

I don't think that really counts, that's saving the child from potentially severe injury and it's more of a last ditch save than anything else. If your parent had maybe another couple seconds s/he could pick you up and remove you from the threat, which my mum did to my sister & I a few times when we were small. I do remember one time though when I almost put my hands on a space heater, my mum saw it at the last moment and nearly clotheslined me on my butt so I wouldn't get burned.

[Akkleptos]

I've been looking for some of the research that he's talked about that says professionals say that hitting your kids, even moderately can cause them to grow up to be violent and unruly adults. Certainly the ones who get beat often and hard do definitely turn out to be violent adults. Ever heard of this guy. Richard Kuklinski mafia hit man. I know it's wikipedia, but if you read it says you'll see what the severe abuse did to him. I'd like to find some studies which look at moderate discipline and how the children grow up to be. I have looked hard (I have a bookmarks folder in firefox on it) but I haven't found anything good.

I haven't been able to find anything really good -and from a reliable-enough source- either. It's apparently not one of the hot topics on the internet. And notice that the case you cite involves severe abuse, which is quite a different matter. Nevertheless, it is true of course that children whose interactions in life almost always involve violence will develop the conditioning that violence is the way to deal with reality. This is simple and expectable behaviourism.

Regarding bibliography, I'll apparently have to dig up some of my books and look this up.

Ok, so you ARE a professional and you think hitting your kids is ok? Isn't there research to the contrary?

In psychology, if you know where to look, you can find research with results that suggest practically anything. The thing is that one cannot just look at the results, but also make sure that the methodology is sound, the source is reputable, etc. Besides, when I say "hit" I mean necessary disciplinary measures, not child abuse. Of course, the perception of the child will vary from individual to individual, which makes the issue tricky, but esentially if you were to casually call your dad an asshole and get slapped across the face, you'd easily learn that's something you should never do, and in time, by sheer conditioning, you'd either consciously or unconciously avoid doing things that call for such drastic measures.

Drugs are a good reason definitely to DISCIPLINE your child. But, flaunting your authority definitely doesn't help. My father was raised in a strict family, and this "You do anything I say, when I say, how I say" just tended to totally piss me off and encourage rebellion. Absolute unquestioned authority just creates tension. I still really don't like him even though I'm an adult now.

I see your point. I, myself, still have a problem with "because I say so" arguments. Nevertheless, think of a whimsical 4 year-old. You're not going to negotiate whether he should follow your instructions, you're not going to explain some intrincate ethical considerations that will probably be too complex for him to grasp, you're not going to enter a tug of war kind of relationship every time you want him to do something -or stop doing something- and have him "extort" things from you just to have him behave. Otherwise, you'd be basically buying his compliance. So, sometimes, it's going to be "You are going to do this, because it's in your best interest and your well-being is my responsibility, and that's that".

Besides, if you let things go this way, he will learn that rules, obligations and prohibitions are all things that can be negotiated. And life just doesn't work that way, so you'd be setting up your child for a very unpleasant life.

I didn't lose my father's approval. Actually, I started to devalue him and think of him as inferior and an idiot for what he did. I didn't care about whether he approved or not.

That has a lot to do with whether you think the punishment was fair or not. It sounds to me that you were old enough to understand many things and in your case the adults should have tried reasoning with you. And the punishment was probably excessive from any perspective. Also, having to withstand abuse from someone you deemed inferior may have resulted in a lot of pent-up feeling of humilliation and frustration.

Besides, I said that it is the child who feels this loss of parental approval, not that it really happens all the time. It's enough that the child feels it, to motivate a change in behaviour.

I suppose you could do something else. Send him to reform school, or call the police rather than hit him/her. I never hit my parents, except my mom once when I was five years old.

That's what I mean. The child must learn that some actions have consequences, and that sometimes these consequences can be quite undesirable, be it a spanking or a week with no videogames (so, you see, I'm not advocating for physical punishment as the one true way to accomplish discipline). The examples you cite, reform school and calling the police make me think you're probably considering older preteens or probably teenagers, which have to be dealt with substantially different than we do with children. And they are both, IMHO, far worse than just a slap on the face for being disrespectful, for example.

I've done that, and a lot worse. I've even told my father I wished he was dead more than once when I was a child. It was the hitting and discipline for reasons I didn't think I deserved it that made me just more angry. I was generally a good person, even as a kid, but there were some things I think went beyond discipline and were too strict.

Ah, as I said before, a lot of resentment can be spawned by parental punishment perceived as unnecessary or downright unfair by the child. Again, I get the impression that you were old enough to be reasoned with (with teens, things start to become more about clean-cut rules and some negotiation, yes) and probably what you went through was indeed uncalled for. Your case complicates way beyond the scope of my initial post, which referred to children only.

[Simon_Jester]

I haven't been able to find anything really good -and from a reliable-enough source- either. It's apparently not one of the hot topics on the internet. And notice that the case you cite involves severe abuse, which is quite a different matter. Nevertheless, it is true of course that children whose interactions in life almost always involve violence will develop the conditioning that violence is the way to deal with reality. This is simple and expectable behaviourism.

Consider the difference between
(1)Spanking or swatting a child for an overt, specific, easily defined, easily avoided form of bad behavior with consequences that any reasonable person (including the child, later on) will realize are bad, and
(2)Beating a child severely, locking them in a closet, or otherwise causing severe physical or mental trauma for arbitrary reasons or for no reason other than one's own anger.

Now, anyone arguing in good faith will probably agree that there is a difference of degree between (1) and (2). I submit that it is so large that the difference in degree could easily become a difference in kind. If that happens (and I am not asserting with any great confidence that it does), then even proving that (2) is strongly correlated with producing violent or crazy kids does not mean that (1) is. There might even be a sort of "hormesis" effect, such that what is toxic to the child's development in high doses is neutral or even beneficial in very small doses.

Now, that's just a theoretical argument, and (as I said) one that I am not asserting with any great confidence. I'd intuit that it works, but I don't have a right to expect human psychology to match my intuitions of human psychology.

[Akkleptos]

Consider the difference between
(1)Spanking or swatting a child for an overt, specific, easily defined, easily avoided form of bad behavior with consequences that any reasonable person (including the child, later on) will realize are bad, and
(2)Beating a child severely, locking them in a closet, or otherwise causing severe physical or mental trauma for arbitrary reasons or for no reason other than one's own anger.

Now, anyone arguing in good faith will probably agree that there is a difference of degree between (1) and (2). I submit that it is so large that the difference in degree could easily become a difference in kind. If that happens (and I am not asserting with any great confidence that it does), then even proving that (2) is strongly correlated with producing violent or crazy kids does not mean that (1) is. There might even be a sort of "hormesis" effect, such that what is toxic to the child's development in high doses is neutral or even beneficial in very small doses.

There's a difference, alright (borrowing from American idioms, heh heh). Extreme violence towards children almost always produces disfunctional adults, but the quid of the matter is just how much violence is too much. That's surely a topic that bears more research, since it's subject to very subjective views and experiences. But yet, your examples are largely illustrative (meaning: clarifying and explaining).

[Aaron]

Does it count as hitting if it was my hand swatted away before three year old me could touch a heated stove top or poison ivy or a snapping turtle? It's more a protective than disciplinary move in those cases when there's not enough time to tell the idiot offspring to stop and walk away, assuming she even has enough functioning brain to do so.

I've had to physically yank my daughter back by the arm to stop her from going past the firing line on the range (people were shooting at the time). It scared the shit out of her, but I took the time t explain why I did what I did and why it was bad for her to walk past a certain point. There is a significant difference between causing some mild pain to save further injury and beating a kid because he said something you didn't like.

Like J says, it's a last ditch thing. Where there an alternative, I assume your mother would have taken it.

[Shrykull]

In psychology, if you know where to look, you can find research with results that suggest practically anything. The thing is that one cannot just look at the results, but also make sure that the methodology is sound, the source is reputable, etc.

As I understand, psychology is a rather soft "science" if you can even call it that. Compare it to something like physics where you can get measureable consistent and mostly accurate results. There are things that really nobody argues about, like if the sun will rise tommorrow, or that gravity exists. I'd also have to do a little research as to how studies are performed, especially psychological ones. You have a control group and a test group. But, I wonder how exactly is someone was abusive in life you can determine why, that if it's on physical discipline maybe that could be the cause, but how do you account for the myriad of variables that could go into it? If your findings do determine that all or some of the people who were disciplined as violent, how can you determine that was the ONLY cause.

Say someone gets mad and throws a brick at someone. If could be because of the accumulation of physical discipline/abuse Or it could be many other things, Maybe he had a relative die; Maybe he lost a basketball championship; Maybe he's taking a lot of stress and pressure from his boss at work; Maybe he flunked a test or didn't get into the college he wanted to; Maybe his girlfriend broke up with him; Maybe he got screwed financially by someone; or someone stole from him: just think of all the things that could cause it, How to you isolate everything else to see if it was solely ONE thing that determines why he acted that way?

But we definitely can say some things are more likely than others. It's known that smoking is bad for you, and it will most likely ruin your health and/or lead to an untimely demise, but it's not guaranteed it will. You could be a chain smoker who started at 20 and lived to be 80, but it's still a better idea not to smoke at all.

That has a lot to do with whether you think the punishment was fair or not. It sounds to me that you were old enough to understand many things and in your case the adults should have tried reasoning with you. And the punishment was probably excessive from any perspective. Also, having to withstand abuse from someone you deemed inferior may have resulted in a lot of pent-up feeling of humilliation and frustration.

Well, I'll clarify. I don't think I was ABUSED. I got him by him, but relatively lightly. I think maybe the problem might have been more like a warm front meeting a cold front (whatever it is that causes a storm) I was born as the first grandchild in my family. My mother never married by biological father and I was raised until I was 5 by my aunts, my mother and my grandmother (who all lived in the same house, my aunts were still kind of young) perhaps I was somewhat spoiled. When my mother married my "stepdad" he was the one who was quite a disciplinarian. Not a harsh one, but he really was authoritative. I believe in discipline to correct some bad things(like calling your dad an asshole) , but to discipline someone for every little thing and shout orders is was what really got under my skin. Having been used to the lifestyle my grandmother and my mother's family provided, a rather lax environment kind of played tug of war with me. My mother is nothing like my father. They say opposites attract. She's very disorganized and spends money on the fly, he pays all the bills and wants things in order. I remember several times him saying things like "You do whatever I say" and "You can tell your child to do anything until their 18" (On a side note is the latter statement true? Barring telling them to do things that are illegal of course)

My brother and my sister who are his biological children are different. They don't have feelings of hostility towards him that I do, But, they had it from the beginning, I didn't.

Ah, as I said before, a lot of resentment can be spawned by parental punishment perceived as unnecessary or downright unfair by the child. Again, I get the impression that you were old enough to be reasoned with (with teens, things start to become more about clean-cut rules and some negotiation, yes) and probably what you went through was indeed uncalled for. Your case complicates way beyond the scope of my initial post, which referred to children

It was generally during my pre-teens that I went through the roughest time with him, 9-13 I'd say. Though, I think I was disrespectful at time, and sometime I did deserve it. I remember once calling my dad stupid because of the way he pronounced a fraction, say 2 over 3 in 2/3 instead of two-thirds.

[Akkleptos]

In psychology, if you know where to look, you can find research with results that suggest practically anything. The thing is that one cannot just look at the results, but also make sure that the methodology is sound, the source is reputable, etc.

As I understand, psychology is a rather soft "science" if you can even call it that. Compare it to something like physics where you can get measureable consistent and mostly accurate results. There are things that really nobody argues about, like if the sun will rise tommorrow, or that gravity exists. I'd also have to do a little research as to how studies are performed, especially psychological ones. You have a control group and a test group. But, I wonder how exactly is someone was abusive in life you can determine why, that if it's on physical discipline maybe that could be the cause, but how do you account for the myriad of variables that could go into it? If your findings do determine that all or some of the people who were disciplined as violent, how can you determine that was the ONLY cause.

That comes through statistical analysis. Pretty much all scientific psychology comes from there (even modern theoretical and statistical psychology). Surely, it won't be quantum mechanics, but psychology has a scientific side of its own. Sadly, a great deal of the "observation" part is denied (or derived from unlawful, historically-condemned experiments -think Mengele-) but through statistical analisys, meaningful results can be (and ARE BEING) gathered by moodern studies.

While human brains are the most complex pieces of matter we have found, humans are not all that unpredictable when it comes to statistical studies. In other words, within a myriad of possibilities, in the end, human rections are not as unpredictable as we'd like to think. We're confronted to a certain, relatively measurable set of circumstances, and we know what human motivations do to the brain and how they effectively exert an effect on physical environment.

Again, this cannot be in any way used as a general pattern to predict human behaviour, but rather a table of probabilities.

The rest of the case you state, Shrykull, deserves a deeper look...

[Shrykull]

The rest of the case you state, Shrykull, deserves a deeper look...

Anything specific? Are you talking about my upbringing, or the parts about statistical studies, all the variables I mentioned that could go into them?

[Akkleptos]

The rest of the case you state, Shrykull, deserves a deeper look...

Anything specific? Are you talking about my upbringing, or the parts about statistical studies, all the variables I mentioned that could go into them?

That's the thing... Anything about real human experience is incredibly complex. As you mention, insane amounts of variables come into play (that's what makes psychology so complex). The way I approach therapy (cognitive therapy), it doesn't matter where your behaviour comes from, but rather, what are you willing to do to correct it in order to be a fully functional human being. SO, this is not Psychoanalysis... I don't give a fuck about what your mother told you on this or that occasion, or when. What I do care is how you feel about it, and why you shouldn't give a fuck about that. There's a lot more to it, but that may suffice for the layperson.

[CarsonPalmer]

I was lightly spanked (one or two swats, never anything enough to actually hurt me) every now and then until I was about 5 or 6. Usually it happened because I was throwing an awful temper tantrum. After that, it stopped, but I did get slapped across the face once by my dad and once by mom on separate occasions as a teenager when I acted like a disgrace. The slap from my dad came from yelling at my mom, the slap from my mom came from yelling at my brother. I deserved both, honestly.

Most of the time, though, my parents were able to instill discipline in us without anything physical.

[ArmorPierce]

Ok, so you ARE a professional and you think hitting your kids is ok? Isn't there research to the contrary?

In psychology, if you know where to look, you can find research with results that suggest practically anything. The thing is that one cannot just look at the results, but also make sure that the methodology is sound, the source is reputable, etc. Besides, when I say "hit" I mean necessary disciplinary measures, not child abuse. Of course, the perception of the child will vary from individual to individual, which makes the issue tricky, but esentially if you were to casually call your dad an asshole and get slapped across the face, you'd easily learn that's something you should never do, and in time, by sheer conditioning, you'd either consciously or unconciously avoid doing things that call for such drastic measures.

It seems that a lot of arguments for completely banning any physical punishment of any kind is based on almost pseudo-science with them making statements such as "A child being spanked will make them more likely to become abusive or criminals themselves!" based on research done that doesn't differentiate the degree of the physical punishment or abuse. In fact, some will argue that them getting physically punished is abuse in of itself and it makes it more likely to do the same to their own kids demonstrates this (this is based on you viewing any physical punishment as abuse at all). A lot of the arguments sounds the same as men and women being physically equal when it comes to strength (the interwebs is filled with this line of thinking) and citing research conducted that demonstrated that equalized for mass male and female muscles are the same strength.

http://www.nospank.net/nytimes2.htm

The studies cited by opponents of corporal punishment, Dr. Baumrind contended, often do not adequately distinguish the effects of spanking, as practiced by nonabusive parents, from the impact of severe physical punishment and abuse. Nor do they consider other factors that might account for problems later in life, like whether parents are rejecting or whether defiant or aggressive children might be more likely to be spanked in the first place.

Dr. Baumrind described findings from her own research, an analysis of data from a long-term study of more than 100 families, indicating that mild to moderate spanking had no detrimental effects when such confounding influences were separated out. When the parents who delivered severe punishment — for example, frequently spanking with a paddle or striking a child in the face — were removed from the analysis, Dr. Baumrind and her colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Owens, found that few harmful effects linked with spanking were left. And the few that remained could be explained by other aspects of the parent-child relationship.

[charlemagne]

I once got slapped by my dad for something I don't remember, but it was some stupid teenager thing, I just remember making him really angry by not stopping to talk back over something menial. It was the only time he ever hit me. Mom never hit me, either, but once when I was really young, like 5, she flung one of my favorite toys across the room when I made her really angry over something. The toy broke, I think this was actually worse for me than receiving a beating

[doan_m]

1. Not getting my math questions right. As a kid in the second or third grade, whenever I constantly got questions wrong in math he would hit me with a rod. Same thing goes for English whenever I didn't know the exact dictionary definition of a word that i didn't bother to look up.

2. In one really nasty moment, I decided to hit him back because i was sick of him whipping me for not getting some of the words I didn't understand in a Nancy Drew Novel in the 4th grade(that he made me read). What naturally followed was even more lashings with a rod and eventually was ostracized for a week or so.

[FSTargetDrone]

The few times I remember being spanked it was never more than a barely-stinging swat with a bare hand on my rump for being excessively nuts or for misbehaving. NEVER, once, ever was I or my sister stuck with an object. My parents would never use a belt. I very much doubt it ever even crossed their minds to use a rod or a cane or anything other than their hands. They also never did the drop your pants so I can spank you thing. In fact, there were no threats of spanking. They just did it right away, quickly, and then that was it

[Frank Hipper]

My mom gave my brother and I a bare-assed spanking with a belt once, she has many issues from her own grossly abusive chilhood and toilet humor is apparently one of them; my dad could never spank us hard enough for it to be really felt.
I remember being spanked a grand total of three times.

If any grandparent, aunt, or uncle had ever hit us, to say nothing of anyone outside the family, I suspect my mom would still be in prison for butchering them.