I can remember my mother spanking me frequently and painfully from my earliest days until I was 14 or 15. What I can never be quite sure of is why exactly she spanked me so frequently and so painfully.
As far as I can recall, I was a well-behaved boy who did fairly well in school and was helpful about the house and the only reason I can think of is that I was too lazy to live up to the expectations of my parents who were intellectuals, both writers and journalists on obscure literary magazines. I think I had inherited some of their brains but my school homework often bore comments of the ‘could try harder’ variety.