Same here. If either my brother or I got out of line, Dad administered quite a few raps on our posteriors. No, he didn't beat us. No, he didn't abuse us. But a good spanking went a long way toward correcting bad behavior. We grew up walking the straight and narrow.
Today, even looking cross-eyed at your kids is called child abuse, so parents don't bother correcting their kids. Hell, a lot of these kids who engage in criminal activity don't even know who their fathers are. Combine a lack of discipline and bad parenting with the "social justice" nonsense they learn in school and police which can't or won't enforce the law for fear of being accused of racial profiling or police brutality, and no wonder the kids are going wild.
I too miss my Dad and those like him. They were the salt of the earth -- mine was from the Greatest Generation. Saddens me we won't see the likes of them ever again.
There's a reason parents won't risk the social services getting involved, actually, quite a few. The kid will be taken anyway, social services people lie like timber at Tunguska, and parents will end up in some database of people who are considered to abuse or neglect their children. If they have any job connected with kids, they'll lose it, including schoolteacher. Few attorneys are willing to fight the social services for fear of being branded as in favor of child abuse (whether or not any actually occurred), and a real fire breather costs serious money if they can find one.
If they darken your doorstep once (likely because of an anonymous complaint--and that source won't be disclosed) they're harder to get rid of than hot gum in carpet, and they'll be back until they find something or have enough bits of lint to weave into some horror story. The presumption is that the parents are guilty.
In many ways it sucks to be a parent nowadays, with the government making rules that presume guilt of the parents and stomp on every Constitutional Right, but which also leave the parents with a lot fewer tools to work with raising their children, and the parents get the blame for the outcome.
Back when I was a kid, if I misbehaved enough in front of a relative (hard to not do where I grew up), I'd get it from the relative and again when I got home, because even in the days of landlines, they knew before I got back.
I think my grandfather removed a full chord of slender branches for switches, just for me alone, and he had 13 grandkids when I was in the mix (4 more came later).
May Almighty God Bless him in perpetuity, for his persistence, and that of my other relatives and especially my parents, finally got through. (God Bless them, too!)
Until we dig the liberals out of the workd who are just there to tell everyone how to raise their children and who will concentrate on genuine cases of abuse (not all complaints, especially 'anonymous' ones are genuine).we're in for generations of ill behaved and poorly disciplined kids.
NOTE: If I was given to prevarication and really wanted to 'get' someone, the Social Services anonymous complaint would put that family under the microscope, and the least flaw would lead to a mess of stress and misery for them. It's worse than swatting someone, because the worst a SWAT team will do is kill you.
