No, You're Not

Re: spanking - according to my parents' testimony, I was spanked twice as a child. Both incidents occurred well before the period whose memories I still retain, both times the "spanking" was a single swift smack on the behind, both times this was sufficient to shock and dismay me (because it was so rare, I never expected it), both times it was sufficient to make my parents feel guilty (feeding their initial resolution that I was not to be spanked). Now, this is also no doubt aided by my parents' testimony that I was an excessively obedient, good tempered, un-trouble-causing little kid, and I'm not going to get up and say that I was that way (which, within the period of my memory, is certainly an accurate description, and I have no reason to believe that I was by way of contrast a hellraiser of a two-year-old) because I was never spanked.

But the point is, I've lived and made friends for an extended period of time in both Massachusetts and northern California, and while I never took a poll, my memories of discussions lead me to believe that anyone who was spanked w/regularity would have been in the extreme minority. Now, these are odd places. They're both (at least socially) rather more liberal than the national average. So I'll posit that these places, both more susceptible to social change than, say, the South, were probably on the leading edge of the changes The Virginian describes. So I'd say that he's more of a regional anomaly than a national one - since I think it's also fair to say that the southern states are going to be on the trailing edge of whatever social change I've just glibly posited the north and west are pioneering.