September 2, 2003

Child rearing Modes (*)

Antiquity - 400 A.D. Parents kill children

Infanticidal Surviving children project their rage onto their own children

The child is seen as the parent (reversal) and is sodomized.

400 - 1300 Parents abandon the child emotionally or physically (to the wet-nurse, the

Abandoning monastery, nunnery, a foster family or the home of other nobles either as a servant or hostage).

The child is full of evil and must always be beaten (projection)

Sodomy (reversal) diminishes.

1300 - 1700 Parents mold the child into shape, as they would soft wax, plaster or clay, Ambivalent by regular beatings and whippings (projection). The child is still swaddled and its insides are examined by means of regular enemas.

1700 - 1800 Parents try to conquer the mind (will) of the child in order to control its Intrusive insides B its anger, needs, masturbation. Projection diminishes and reversal disappears. Mother nurses, toilet trains early, prays (but does not play) with the child, punishes for masturbation, hits but not regularly, often obtaining obedience by means of threats and guilt.

1800 - 1950 Parents train, guide, teach the child to conform, socialize it, help it Socializing form habits. The guiding concept is sociological functionalism. Freud conceptualizes Achanneling impulses.@ Skinner develops Abehaviorism.@ Children are struck and scolded. The father begins to take interest in the child.

1950 - Parents listen to the child express what it needs. Both parents are Helping fully involved emotionally in the child=s life, empathizing with and fulfilling its expanding needs. They play with it, tolerate its regressions, interpret its emotional conflicts and provide the objects which are specific to its evolving interests. They do not discipline, strike or scold.

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(*) Summarized from deMause, Lloyd, Ed., The History of Childhood (Jason Aronson, Northvale, New Jersey), 1974, pp. 51-52.