I’m now in my early late 60s and long retired, but before my marriage and raising my own family, I spent about eight years working as a nanny both in the UK and overseas, and I thought you might like to hear of some of my experiences.

In the jobs I was lucky enough to get, the family policy towards corporal punishment varied widely. Some of the parents I worked for were very much anti-smacking, and of course I respected their choice, even though on many an occasion I felt my hand itch to give out a quick smack. In my experience, the younger ones were generally less well-behaved in those non-smacking families.

In other positions, the option to smack bottoms was left open to my own judgment. Most only allowed hand spanking, I have to say, but I have quite a hard hand (or at least that’s what my charges told me!) and, the punishment of a well smacked bottom was quite enough to restore good behaviour.

In a few of my positions, the parents have been very firmly in favour of CP and allowed me total free rein in disciplinary matters. In these cases, I mostly chose to use the hairbrush.

This implement was recommended to me when I was starting out by an older nanny who worked down the street from me, and who I saw most days out with our respective children. She told me: “There’s nothing better than the back of the brush on their bottom to make them behave.”

I subsequently bought a Victorian ebony hairbrush from a local antiques market. My colleague was right – a smacked bottom with the hairbrush is factors more painful than an open palm, and the result is that the chastisement needs to be used only very rarely. A couple of families I’ve worked for had expressed frustration that smacking their offspring wasn’t working – a short, sharp encounter with Nanny’s hairbrush soon put paid to that idea!

I will end by mentioning something of an anomaly – a position where corporal punishment was highly approved of but nevertheless I wasn’t allowed to smack. This was when I worked for a minor member of the aristocracy and his wife, and I was told that all CP would be administered by the children’s father.

Whenever there was misbehaviour in the nursery, I would have to go down and see the father about the matter and if he agreed with me that a spanking was merited (as he usually did), I would be instructed to take the child (there were two little boys) to the bathroom. Once there, we would wait for father to come up with the slipper. I would leave them to it and the door would be locked behind me.

Then that boy would be put over father’s knee for a very sound beating – you could hear the smacks and squeals echoing around the bathroom, even through a locked door. Eventually, a crying child would be delivered back to the nursery for me to comfort and put to bed.
Then it would be bedtime – smacked bottom and bed was the usual punishment, even if it was in the middle of the day. As I say, those little boys were well spanked, but they respected and loved their father.

I married quite late (for those days) at 25 and went on to have two boys of my own. Of course, in the role of Mummy rather than Nanny, I had a total free choice about spanking. I began with a few mild hand spanks at around two and a half, but as soon as they started school I switched to my trusty old hairbrush.