Samples English Cult V2 Ils 88 by Josephine Klein

Author:Josephine Klein [Klein, Josephine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136238864
Google: be5EAQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-08T05:51:03+00:00

In passing we may also note the amount of thought that this mother gives to what she is doing and the strain that such thinking imposes on someone unaccustomed to it. This mother is trying to analyse and to plan. The effort she is making to put the description of her behaviour into words may have important effects on the development of her child, of the kind that was discussed on pages 542–3.

Such parents may start reading books to make sure that they are doing right by their children. This may be a very frightening form of culture-contact. The following passage, from Susan Isaacs, seems calculated to produce an insecure parent. First published in 1929, it was reprinted fourteen times, last in 1950-

Not so very long ago it was taken for granted that parents had by nature or tradition most of the knowledge needed to enable them to bring up their children well. The baby then wore swaddling clothes so that he should not kick, and a tight belt so that he could not breathe. He was kept carefully away from ‘draughts’ and fresh air, and heavily clothed so that he should not catch cold. He was fed whenever he cried, and given soothing syrup or a none-too-clean comforter when could not be fed.

Now, however, we leave the infant free to kick and breathe, we not only put him to sleep with wide-open windows or out in the garden, but we let him lie and roll naked to the very sun and air from which we used to shelter him so carefully.

So far from trusting the mere affection and natural knowledge of the nursing mother, we feed him by the clock, at three or four-hour intervals . . . The important thing about this change in our belief as to what is best for the children's bodies is not simply a change of custom, nor the passing of one tradition in favour of another. It is that mothers and nurses have turned away from mere custom and blind tradition, to science. Hearsay and habit are no longer enough. Many practices that had been taken for granted for centuries have been found to be false guides when carefully tested . . .

In the care of the child's mind, also, this is beginning to be true but ... we still tend largely to take it as a matter of course that we know by nature, or by the experience of our training in childhood, what is best for our children's mental health; and whenever the child behaves in a way which does not please us, we are ready to act. We do so, out of our own good or bad humour, out of a habit of acting so, out of ‘principles’; but rarely out of a full knowledge of what in the child's mind has led him to do the thing we don't like. Yet without that knowledge we cannot be sure that we are dealing with him in the way most likely to help him.

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