Found in a back issue of the UK nostalgia magazine, "Best of British" (November 1998):

"Post Bag

[Heading] Caned by mother - for visiting boy friend!

I was born just before the war. When I was growing up, girls were expected to be much better behaved than boys. Boys were expected to get up to mischief, but the same behaviour from girls was regarded as 'bad', sometimes even wicked.

My mother was very proper, strait-laced in her ideas and ways, and I seldom dared to answer her back or defy her. I was allowed to go out with my friends on only two evenings a week, then I had to be in by nine o'clock sharp: no excuses were accepted. She strictly forbade me to have anything to do with boys, and soon put a stop to any friendship that seemed in danger of developing with any of the few I met.

In my last year at school I became friendly with the brother of a girl at school We spent a few evenings together when I was supposed to be visiting his sister. I need hardly say it was all quite innocent!

Then one evening a neighbour must have seen us and told my mother. When I got home she was waiting for me. I was marched 'straight up those stairs' and thrashed with a cane. That was only ever for the very worst behaviour.

I think in those days you were either a child or an adult. There was no in-between.

Mrs E. McQuade."

yet, the writer seems more nostalgic than angry at the strict regime she was brought up in..