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.Toilet training goals relaxed, a clear sign of parental willingness toaccept nuisance in return for careful handling of children.Repressionwas to be avoided in teaching children not to soil themselves, even ifone had to wait an extra year for children to respond to the logic of bath-rooms.A host of standard 19th-century disciplinary staples, quite apartfrom spanking or will-breaking, were now seen as retrograde.Fathers, in the updated view of good parenting, were no longerto be used as final disciplinary authorities.Paternal involvement withchildren was encouraged, but the new styles stressed friendliness itwas important to treat children as pals.And, in fact, though some5758 ANXIOUS PARENTSfathers unquestionably maintained the older methods, in most middle-class families mothers became the chief sources of discipline. Wait tillyour father gets home, the classic 19th-century threat, became lesscommon.In part the result of a major redefinition of gender roles in par-enting, the shift both reflected and contributed to an effort to be gentlerwith children.Periodically, in the 1920s and then again, more consistently, fromthe 1960s on, new attention to child abuse also helped set limits on themost extreme forms of discipline.Again there was debate about this,and some parents and subcultures viewed as acceptable practices thatthe larger society came to question.At the same time, some critics feltthat the attacks on abuse were too restrained, leaving too many parentsfree to inflict physical or psychological harm on their offspring.Still, thepublicity given to abuse, and the clear effort to extend the definition tocover mental (and sexual), as well as physical, harm, signaled the grow-ing consensus that discipline had to stay within some boundaries.Prac-tices once seen as permissible became criminal, beyond the pale.Thedemocratic claim that abuse knew no social boundaries drove the pointhome to the middle classes.Public standards, in this regard, echoed themessages being delivered in the child-rearing literature.And, throughout the period, new expertise abounded, urging par-ents to reconsider their disciplinary traditions and natural impulsesalike.As one guru put it in 1952, with explicit condescension:  Whereprofessional guidance cannot be accepted.because of the neuroticpersonality of a parent, the problems become intensified. 1 Parents tookthis approach with some large grains of salt, but it was difficult to avoidsome additional uncertainty about one s own conduct in dealing withproblems of children s behavior.The impact of expertise was heightened by the increasing isola-tion of many parents.Looser ties with other family members, includ-ing parents parents, left more fathers and mothers wondering aboutthe validity of their disciplinary choices.Suburban living allowedfamilies to glimpse varied styles of discipline from strict to permis-sive but without full community sanction for any one style.Theneed for individual decision making increased, and, with it, some newuncertainty.Children, for their part, in peer networks tighter thanthose their parents enjoyed, eagerly reported on other, alternative dis-ciplinary patterns that were more to their taste ( But Susie s parentslet her. ).DISCIPLINE 59From a number of angles, then, 20th-century adults, experts andparents alike, revisited the question of disciplining children.Some dis-cussions followed from debates launched in the 19th century.Others,however, like those involving fathering, specifically challenged 19th-century conventions.It proved difficult, however, to seize on a fully ac-ceptable 20th-century alternative, in part because the idea of children svulnerability made almost any disciplinary move suspect.What not todo was clearer than the reverse, and parental anxiety understandablyincreased, given the lack of definitive resolution and the need to reex-amine past practice.We can begin with the core connection to the newimage of childhood, the revisiting of the role of guilt.GUILTNothing suggested the rethinking of 19th-century discipline more thanthe growing concern about the use of guilt.Here was the central emo-tion deployed in up-to-date Victorian child rearing, the alternative tocommunity shame and physical harshness alike.Children must bebrought to see that bad behavior brought temporary deprivations oflove, until, willing to admit their guilt, they became open to reform anda return to the family circle.A guilt-laden exile to one s room becamethe most widely acceptable form of punishment.However, this tactic assumed a sturdy child, capable of standing upto emotional challenge and even to temporary suffering, and this wasprecisely what the new paradigm of childhood brought into question.Attacks on guilt became part of the growing warnings in the child-rear-ing literature about anger, jealousy, and fear.One of the new taboos indealing with childish manifestations of these emotions or with toilettraining involved making things worse by adding guilt.For example, itwas thought that the angry child would become more angry (whetherovertly or not) if guilt was applied.Guilt became a source of frustrationthat might in turn lead to lasting emotional malfunction.Up-to-date ad-visers were quite aware of their innovations in this area; guilt becamepart of a repressive Victorian past that had to be exorcised.Guilt s potential power was recognized and addressed in essen-tially the same fashion as that of anger or jealousy: it should be venti-lated so that it would not take hold [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]