The Club - Meeting 345 - DD and Parenting

“Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.” - Carl Jung

Hello all.  Welcome back to the Disciplinary Couples Club.  Our weekly gathering of men and women who are in, or would like to be in, Domestic Discipline relationships. 

I hope you all had a good week.  The same can’t really be said for the country, unfortunately, with the Coronavirus surging again in 31 states.  So much for it dying on its own accord over the summer.

I want to thank everyone for keeping the conversation going so well last week after I lazily adopted Belle’s comment suggestion and added very little to it in the process.  In the process, some good stuff came out.  A comment by Alan, led to some discussion our audience.  He observed:

“I should acknowledge I did benefit greatly from my former girlfriend’s discipline. (I have recently discovered that she probably reads this blog, so I need to be transparent here.)  My sense is that quite a few women either in F/M relationships or interested in them are tracking your blog. I hope even more comment. I have learned a lot from those who have shared their views and experiences.”

I share ZM’s skepticism of whether it is really the case that quite a few women in F/m relationships for interested them are monitoring the blog, though I hope Alan is right.  It’s always a little disappointing to me that after seven years of blogging on this topic, the total number of simultaneous female commenters seems to stay about the same.  Seems like it’s always kind of gain-one-lose-one.  It would be nice to build up a roster of longer-term female commenters.  Assuming there are some substantial number who encounter the blog in one way or another, Liz laid out a partial prescription for keeping them around:

“My husband found this blog and showed it to me. I decided to comment because there is an intelligent exchange of ideas and as I understand it there are few blogs on this topic that are not about titillation. And because Dan specifically asked the wives to participate.”

I think (hope) I’ve been doing a better job of inviting wives to participate than I did for the first two years of the blog.  I never had any intention to exclude them and, in fact, always hoped they would participate.  I always just kind of assumed that if I phrased topic questions with a husband-centric way, a wife who wanted to respond would just flip things around and comment from the female perspective.  I think that assumption was a mistake, and I’ve tried to be more inclusive in the way I phrase topics.

As for Liz’s kind description of the blog as a place for an intelligent exchange of ideas that don’t center on titillation, that one is harder to pull off and also not always in line with my own inclinations.  I do try to keep the blog focused on exchanges of ideas, views and experiences about Domestic Discipline, but I’m not a prude.  I obviously find a lot of the content I post and others’ stories titillating. And, I’m not a prude by any means.  When Danielle or Carol or other wives allude to kinky activities that are distinct from, but wrapped up in, their DD activities, it definitely perks up my interest.  Recently, I found myself tempted to ask them to expand on those allusions. But, inevitably some guy who reads the blog and is into Femdom would use that as an excuse to post a bunch of nonSexuiturs, and I’d have a very hard time explaining why it’s OK in one instance but not in another.  I hate Potter Stuart-like “I know it when I see it” exercises in line drawing; but sometimes that’s what I’m left with.  Anyway . . . thanks to all of you for the kind thoughts on the blog and its direction.

This week’s topic is one I was thinking of last weekend before I ran out of time to do much with it that week.  It was Father’s Day weekend, and my thoughts were inevitably drawn to my relationship with my kids.  We’ve talked a lot on this blog about the maternal aspects of discipline.

But I think I’ve only once did a full post (Meeting 276 in December of 2018) about the role our interactions with our fathers might have on our openness to Domestic Discipline as an adult.   https://disciplinedhubbies.blogspot.com/2018/12/dcc-meeting-276-fathers-sons.html. At that time I was thinking mainly of whether being disciplined by a father might have influenced our commenters openness to DD as adults.

Liz gave us a different angle on this last week.  Growing up, she was aware that her mom disciplined her dad.  In her case, it didn’t seem to have much influence on her own marriage until her husband actually asked for it.  As she said:

“I also was surprised that I didn't think of using DD myself before my husband suggested it. Since it was in use by my parents, you would think that I would have thought of it. But I had a blind spot, trying to be the best modern-day version of the 50s wife I could be. But some of them spanked their husbands, too, my mom being one example.”

This wasn’t the first time she mentioned her early exposure to the idea of F/m adult spanking and discipline. A few weeks ago, she discussed it in the context of how easily she took to spanking once Art requested it:

“I do think I slipped into my disciplinarian role quite easily, but I assumed that was because spanking was so prevalent in my family that it was not considered a big deal. So it is interesting to hear that other women without my background also have been able to adopt the role easily. Maybe it is not that hard to act parental towards men who act childish!”

 Compare that to “Holly,” a commenter from a few years ago who, like Liz, was aware her dad was spanked.  And, her mother appears to be have been even more open about it:

"There wasn’t any time I wasn’t aware of domestic discipline. Mom spanked our dad, never in front of us, but when she took him into the bedroom there was no doubt what was going on and anyone in the house could hear it. I didn’t think much of it except that mom was definitely in charge, which everyone knew anyway."

But, in her case it originally led to an aversion to being a spanking wife. She got over that, however, and as in Liz’s case it was her mother’s insistence that the husband deserved a thrashing that served as the impetus for eventually taking up the paddle

“The amusing thing is that growing up I thought my mother was a bitch for spanking too often and too severely. Now I find although I probably do not spank as often as she did, I certainly spank harder. . . .  Calling me a bitch was what led to my husband’s first appointment with the strap. He had done it before, but my mom heard it for the first time and told me I was a fool for allowing it. There were other things going on at the time, including his general brattiness and temper tantrums when he was frustrated. It was a big change for me, because I had been determined to manage my own marriage differently than my mom had done. But over a period of time, about three years, I saw the same behavior in my husband that had gotten dad in trouble with mom.

Let’s talk a little bit about how DD influences multiple generations and the chains of cause and effect involved.  What was your parent’s attitude toward spanking and discipline and how did it affect, if at all, your own openness to DD as an adult whether you are now spanker or spankee?  Further, how has being a Disciplined Husband or Disciplinary Wife affected you as a parent?  

If you are a husband who is spanked by your wife, does that affect your relationship with your kids in any way?  Does it make you a better father? More attentive and less immature, perhaps?  Does being subject to spanking and being lectured or chastised affect how you interact with your kids?

For the moms, how did your own exposure or lack thereof to spanking as a kid affect your own openness to adult corporal punishment?  Today, has taking a disciplinary role over your husband changed your approach to being a parent in any way?   

Have a good weekend.