My Aunt Gracie was my dad’s older sister, by about 12 years. I had a great relationship with her and her three boys, Joseph, Patty, and Johnny – especially Johnny, as he was only about a year older than me and we were like brothers. I spent many weekends staying with the family and sleeping […]

My parents always spanked me soundly whenever they felt it was necessary. I can’t remember what age I got my first, but it was well before I started school. Mom would generally spank me hard with her hand. However, sometimes she would take off her slipper and give it to me with that, and sometimes […]

I grew up in northern Italy in the 80s, as the only child in a fairly middle-class family. Although spanking was definitely looked on as old-fashioned by that time – indeed, my mother was unashamedly old-fashioned – such discipline didn’t attract the stigma or indeed the state intervention that it would today. However, the incident […]

  My mother was definitely a believer in smacking. I was by no means the most unruly child of my cohort in school but like all children, I did need discipline, and when my mother was involved, that usually meant a sore bottom. When I was very little I would most likely be smacked on the […]

My next-door neighbor Linda was a single woman who had two teenage daughters. She was very old-fashioned in her outlook, lady-like and proper in her manner. Linda always wore beautiful house dresses with a full skirt and petticoat, and over it she wore an apron in which she did her housework and cooked. Every time […]

I was playing at my friend Amanda’s house. when we heard agitated yelling from her next-door neighbour’s home. It sounded like the neighbour lady was lecturing her son, Tony, who was one year ahead of us in school. We decided that we wanted a closer look, so we crept forward and hid behind the bushes […]