My first memory... long ago... It was dark. And stinky. And then...a rip to a slit of light. And waiting behind the light was... a horrible man. And he beat me, this man. He hit me, and I felt my first sensation. Unspeakable pain. And he dumped me. It was like fire, this pain. It was then, that I swore, I would never feel this pain again! And that moment, I realized... I wanted to inflict the pain on others!
— Ren Höek, Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", "Ren Seeks Help"
The old myth that immediately after a baby is born, the doctor has to spank it in order to start its breathing (holding it upside down like a plucked chicken is optional). The parents will usually protest, only for the doctor to reassure them that it's necessary and/or "tradition". If the baby starts crying loudly, that means it’s breathing properly. Congratulations on your new bundle of joy. Sometimes this trope will be implied rather than shown to avoid showing nudity and/or violence against children, with a slapping sound offscreen followed by a baby's cry.
Sometimes, this forms the basis for a traumatic memory of being spanked as a newborn, which is usually Played for Laughs. Never mind that consciously remembering such a thing should be impossible, as your brain doesn’t develop the ability to store long-term memories until you're about a year old.
This trope may be a pop-cultural corruption of something that really is sometimes done in pediatric first aid: if an infant is choking, part of the recommended remedy is to strike the infant firmly between the shoulderblades with the heel of one's palm, in order to dislodge whatever is obstructing their airway.
Related:
- Comedic Spanking: Spanking utilized for humor.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: May overlap, especially in the variant where someone inexplicably remembers being spanked when they were first born.
- No Infantile Amnesia: Can happen if someone remembers being spanked in the delivery room.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Metal Men: In the arc revolving around Dr. Strangeglove and his Brainchildren, one of the superintelligent infants is shown insisting upon his birth that the obligatory spanking be done quickly so he can finish studying.
- Super Diaper Baby: The doctor prepares to give the Hoskins' baby the spank of life, despite their protests. His attempt to do this somehow ends with him accidentally throwing the baby out the window, where he lands in Deputy Dangerous' beaker of Super-Power Juice and drinks it. Deputy Dangerous angrily demands that the baby give back his Super-Power Juice, so the baby beats him up, and then spanks the doctor so hard he hops away yelling, "Owie wowie zowie!!" When the Hoskins parents finally get a chance to name their baby and decide to call him Billy, the doctor mutters that they should have named him Spanky instead.
- X-Men: Jamie Madrox's self-duplication powers first manifested on the day he was born when the doctor spanked him and caused him to split in two.
Fan Works
- In this
Soul Eater comic, Death the Kid and Crona have just had a baby. Lord Death busts through the window to see his newborn grandson and asks if he can "do the honors".
Death the Kid: The honors? Honor of what?
Lord Death: [holding the baby upside down] Why, the SPANK OF LIFE, of course. And a 1, and a 2, and a—
Death the Kid: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NO!!!
Films — Live-Action
- Addams Family Values: At the beginning of the movie, while the doctors are delivering Morticia's baby, Thing hands a nurse a pair of forceps. The nurse freaks and throws Thing into the next room where it smacks a newborn baby on the tushie, just as someone else was about to do the same thing.
- Parodied in Baśń O Ludziach Stąd as Natalia's Freudian Excuse explaining why she's so rough, tough, distrustful and no-nonsense.
- Coneheads: After Prymaat successfully giving birth, the doctor spanks baby Connie and she cries. Much to Beldar and Prymaat's joy.
- A Serbian Film: Rasa spanks a baby girl he helped deliver, right before the film's infamous "Newborn PORN!" scene.
- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: The birth of baby Hannah is offscreen, but we can hear the spanking and then Hannah's first cry.
Gideon: I'm an uncle. [faints full length on the floor]
Literature
- Captain Underpants: Discussed in Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People. Several kids are Writing Lines, and one of them writes, "I'm so ugly that when I was born, the doctor slapped my mom."
- Cherry Ames: In Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse, Cherry is assigned to the delivery room and helps Dr. Walker assist when a woman gives birth. She winces when Dr. Walker wallops the baby, but knows it is necessary.
- Discworld:
- Equal Rites: When Granny Weatherwax has to give Esk a Pull Yourself Together slap, the narration notes that she'd only struck Esk once before — "the blow a baby gets to introduce it to the world and give it a rough idea of what to expect from life."
- Small Gods: Deacon Vorbis asks Brutha, who has Photographic Memory, to tell him the first thing he remembers. Brutha's response is: "There was a bright light, and then someone hit me."
- Wyrd Sisters: Implied — Nanny Ogg threatens a guard at the castle by telling him that she was the midwife who delivered him, and says, "I gave you your first good hiding in this valley of tears, and by all the gods if you cross me now I will give you your last."
- How To Be A Little Sod: The baby in the story describes his own birth, seeing that he is surrounded by people saying “the baby’s not crying!”, and he is then slapped on the bottom; so he gives them what they want, and lets out a huge bellow. But he is then confused when a few minutes later, the same people are saying “there there, there’s no need to cry”.
- Time Enough for Love: In this Robert A. Heinlein novel, the protagonist (Lazarus Long) at one point has to deliver a baby. (At that point in his very long life Lazarus Long is a starship captain, but he had previously also had a career as a doctor and delivered babies.) The pregnancy is the result of Brother–Sister Incest, albeit a complicated case involving genetic engineering which should mean the siblings are "safe" to reproduce (genetically speaking); but Long is very worried about the possibility of a seriously deformed or genetically defective infant. In any event, at the birth he makes a "nearly instantaneous inspection" of the child, decides the kid's a perfectly normal baby boy, and so Long "slapped his tochis and he bawled".
Live-Action TV
- The Benny Hill Show: One sketch sees Benny Hill as a car mechanic, who at some point opens a car's hatchback and takes out a baby car, holds it like a newborn, and spanks it to make it cry.
- Family Matters: Discussed in "Saved by the Urkel"; Carl gets electrocuted by a lamp when he refuses to heed Steve Urkel's advice to unplug it while repairing it, leading to Urkel having to revive him through CPR. During this time, Urkel mentions to Eddie that he has a bit of experience in first aid; when he was born, the doctor slapped the wrong end and gave him a nosebleed.
- Monk: Throughout "Mr. Monk and the Naked Man," Monk holds a bias towards believing a nudist committed a murder on a nude beach, despite the fact that the man was in jail on the night of the murder. A talk with his therapist, Dr. Kroger, reveals his fear comes from when someone hit him while he was naked, which the doctor realizes is Monk remembering his own birth (a feat of which he isn't too surprised).
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the episode "Disaster", the Enterprise is crippled by a collision with a "quantum filament" and various crewmembers are trapped in various places in the ship. Worf has to assist in delivering Keiko's baby, finishing up with smacking it to induce breathing.
Theatre
- J.B.: In one of his digressions on the nature of human suffering, Nickles says, "They beat our rumps to make us breathe."
Websites
- Chuck Norris Facts: On the day he was born, the only one who cried was the doctor. Never spank Chuck Norris.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Rival," a slapping sound is briefly heard during the speedrun of Nicole giving birth offscreen, followed by a newborn Anais crying and the doctor saying, “Congratulations!”
- The Cramp Twins: The opening intro shows each of the twins as newborns receiving the spank. Compared to Lucian crying as expected, Wayne happily moaned, much to the parents' disdain.
- I Am Weasel:
- "I Am My Lifetime" has Weasel and Baboon being born, showing the doctors delivering them. Upon being delivered, Weasel immediately lets his doctor know he's breathing just fine and doesn't need to be spanked. Baboon, meanwhile, is spanked as normal, though not before the doctor and nurse giggle at the sight of his red butt.
- In "I Am Bush Pilot", Weasel is an airplane pilot that has to help a large group of women get upstream where they can give birth (like Salmon). When the women go into labor during the flight, Weasel dresses as a gynecologist and prepares to help them. A Gilligan Cut later sees him back in the cockpit, visibly exhausted and telling himself he hopes he won't have to spank another baby for a long time to come.
- The Incredible Dennis the Menace: In "Hospitality", Dennis is sent to the hospital for a tonsillectomy. When the doctors have horror stories of Dennis' past visits, Dr. Beresford brings up that Dennis was born at their hospital, as Dr. Chamberlain delivered him. What follows is a flashback where Dr. Chamberlain holds the newborn Dennis upside down and spanks him, making him cry.
- Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon": Played for Drama in "Ren Seeks Help." Ren is visiting a therapist to figure out why he is so violent and cruel, after he did something to Stimpy that was so awful, even he regretted it after the fact. He explains to Mr. Horse that the first sensation he ever felt in his life was "unspeakable pain" from being spanked by a doctor after he was born. Ever since that day, he has had sadistic tendencies from wanting others to feel the same pain as he did.
- Rugrats: "Stu-Maker's Elves" reveals that Chuckie is afraid of heights because he remembers being held by the ankles as a newborn before getting the spank of life. He only remembers it as a bad dream, though, as does Tommy, who admits to having had the same "dream" too.
