How rare was it for parents not to spank their children in the 1800s?

In The Patriarch, I describe how John Casper’s Father, Karl Jacob Kasper may have embraced humanitarian, non-spanking forms of child discipline. He was associated with the Forty-Eighters and the liberal reforms they endorsed. Those reforms may have extended to his attitudes about corporal punishment. John would likely have adopted his father’s non-corporal punishment child-rearing attitudes, at least in a broad sense.  

When John and Ambrosia Casper reared their children between 1879 and 1915, many American schools and homes were re-evaluating the need for and impact of spanking of children in general. Historians note that corporal punishment in America was first broadly discouraged for underage girls. For boys, spanking remained closely tied to an appropriate way to instill rigid standards of masculinity and toughness.

Most religious groups in Indiana in the 1800s and 1900s embraced doctrines of corporal punishment of children based on “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them” (The Bible, Proverbs 13:24, NIV). While the German Reformed Church allowed local decision-making on such practices, the Zion Church the Caspers attended most likely embraced child spanking and discipline.  

State school systems began serious re-examination of corporal punishment policies after the US Civil War. New York State abolished corporal punishment in schools in 1877 and some other states followed their lead. A surprising number of American states legally permit spanking in schools and/or homes as of 2019. Indiana is among 19 states that still allows corporal punishment, according to the Center for Effective Discipline (2018).

Casper family attitudes toward corporal punishment were easily the exception in the 1800s, and perhaps would remain an exception even today, especially in rural Indiana.  

 To learn more:

An excellent article on the “History of Corporal Punishment” was published by AptParenting (see https://aptparenting.com/history-of-corporal-punishment).