Where our mother’s wrath over our misbehavior was concerned, it was totally a different matter from the way Dad dealt with it. She would not give warnings, but would merely state in matter of fact terms that we had earned a spanking, and that we were going to get it at bedtime. We kids then could not bargain our way out of a thorough spanking before bed, no matter how much better our interim behavior became. Once our behavior merited percussion correction, we were certainly going to get it dealt out – in spades.

But given our well-developed sense of self preservation, which had developed fully...