Haywire is the memoir of Brooke Hayward, daughter of actress Margaret Sullivan and theatrical producer Leland Hayward.  It is a story of coming to terms with one's family, one's identity and how they interrelate.  Nobody in this world grows up unscathed, and the honesty as well as sensitivity with which Hayward looks at her family is a moving reading experience.  With great skill she brings to life the complexities of an individual family and how the various personalities affect each other. 

There are two spanking scenes in the book.  The first deals with Brooke and her sister Bridget.  I believe she included this scene to show how differently each of her parents related to them as children.  Her mother was strict and determined to enforce high standards of behavior.  Her father, described as a happy go lucky man about town, rather than a family man, was nevertheless a tender and emotionally available parent.

Bridget and I shared a bedroom for the first time in our lives; it was unbelievably exhilarating to lie side by side and talk to each other before going to sleep.  One night, Mother stuck her head in the door and told us to stop the racket, it was bedtime; but after a safe interlude we went right on singing and giggling.  The house was built around a brick patio, which he crossed again in ten minutes to say that we were being not only extremely disobedient but foolish as well, since we could be clearly heard in the living room across the courtyard where all the grown ups were sitting, and if she heard one more sound, she was warning us, we would have to be spanked.  Heady and reckless with excitement, we sang a chorus of "Frere Jacques" loudly in unison.  Mother stormed back, yanked the Dutch door open, and switched on the light.  "Leland!" she called across the darkened patio.  'Come here this instant!" We had never seen her so angry; it was thrilling.  Father came and stood sheepishly in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.  "All right, Leland, you take Brooke and I'll take Bridget," she announced, marching over to Bridget's bed.  "Maggie," Father murmured, "couldn't we give them one more chance?"  Mother was pulling down Bridget's pajamas. "Nope," she said firmly, and started to spank Bridget.  I began to giggle; by the time Father had me across his lap, I was laughing uproariously.  It was my first spanking. As his hand smacked my behind for the third or fourth time, inflicting actual pain, I felt a sensation of surprise, then fury, both of which turned my laughter into uncontrollable sobs.  I was vaguely aware of Bridget crying in the bed next to me, and then Father picking me up and carrying me outside where he leaned against a post entwined with bougainvillea.  He held me tightly against his chest, so tightly I could hardly breathe. "Brooke," he whispered to me, beginning to cry himself; unable to see his face clearly in the filtered light, I reached up and touched his eyes in wonder-his tears soaked my hair and mine his polo shirt. "Brooke," he said, weeping, "I promise you something-do you know what a promise is? --I shall never spank you again as long as I live." He kept his word.

The second spanking scene described in the memoir was received by little brother Bill. It is a spanking any kid can look back upon and be proud of, for he held out for 14 spankings in a battle of wills with his mother. Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter tells a similar story of enduring a number of spankings for refusing to give way.  What is a mother to do?  Keep on spanking, it seems.  

One night after we had gone to bed, Mother was making the rounds of the house.  She noticed, feeling absurd, that all the classic ingredients of a conventional horror story were present: she was all alone, a little nervous; it was Emily's day off and the cook and the butler slept in another wing. Father was in New York City,  rehearsing his new play, The State of the Union; there was a storm raging outside, thunder and lightening, windows banging, floors creaking, and branches scraping the side of the house. On her way up to bed, she turned on the light in Bill's room for a minute to make sure he was all right.  He was lying in Grandfather's big mahogany bed, sound asleep and covered with blood.  Mother thought he was dead, murdered.  In a second she had him in her arms. The pillow and sheets were blood-soaked, his scalp was scored with gashes, and there were tufts of hair all over the place; she looked around wildly and suddenly noticed, under a glass ashtray on the bed table, a bloody razor blade.  She shook him awake. "Bill!" she shrieked. "What have you done to yourself? Why?" Bill looked at her with total calm.  "Oh," he answered, yawning, "I fell out of bed." If there was anything that made Mother see red-like waving a flag in front of a bull, as she said-it was a lie."I'll give you one more chance to tell me the truth," she'd say, "While I count to ten.  Ready?  Now think carefully. One, two, three, four…" In this instance Bill was as obstinate as she. He stood his ground, hoping that she would go away so that he could go back to sleep, and wondering what would happen if she didn't.  She went to the bathroom and got his hairbrush.  "This is going to hurt me a lot more than it is going to hurt you," she remonstrated, a line of dialogue that accompanied our spankings as inevitably as "Think of the poor starving children i8n China" went with dinner. Bill was resolute. He got his first spanking. Then he and Mother fell into each other's arms and they both cried and he promised that he would never never tell another lie, and she said, "Now tell me the truth; what really happened?" And after thinking for a minute, he answered, "It was just an accident-I banged my head on the headboard." She spanked him again. By this time Bridget and I were sitting bolt upright in our beds across the hall, speculating in excited whispers about what crime our four-year-old brother-the treasure, the apple of his mother's eye-could possibly have committed to produce such an uproar. The sounds coming from his room, coupled with the sounds of the storm outside were horrendous. They went on for a long time .He held out for thirteen different stories and thirteen spankings. Bridget and I didn't know that until the next morning at the breakfast table….But what he did then to cap off the morning, that morning after thirteen spankings-an endurance record that left Bridget and me baffled,  yet extremely proud of him-seemed so exquisitely perverse to us that he passed heroically into some eternal hall of fame.  When Mother came into his room to say good morning, as if nothing had happened the night before, she found the walls of his bathroom decorated with freshly squeezed toothpaste, tubes and tubes of it.  "Bill," she said, shocked," why on earth did you make this mess?  "I didn't mean to, " he responded, innocently widening his eyes; "it just happened. The toothpaste slipped out of my hand," and Mother froze. I'll give you one more chance to tell the truth," she began.  "here I go-one, two…_ Bill had his fourteenth spanking before breakfast.  He was unable to sit down for a week.