Parents and Children
The Hand of the Potter
By MONICA FURLONG
EVERY generation has its own mystique of Child- care. That of our mothers' generation cen- tred upon the bizarre feeding notions of Dr. Truby King. Coolly dis- regarding the comfort- able precedent of all the foregoing centuries they decided that over-feed- ing was the great danger and that babies should be fed strictly measured qudntities on an in- flexible timetable. If their stomachs refused to adapt themselves to this arbitrary pattern, that was unfortunate; they must be trained to con- form. If they woke up yelling with hunger half an hour before their feed was due they still could not have it because that would spoil the timetable. With this barbaric system went also the let-them-cry and the rod-in-pickle doctrines. If mothers picked their babies up' and comforted them, as every instinct in them yearned to do, then, they were told, the little varmint would always expect it. Babies were artful little devils, always grabbing for more than their fair share of affection, attention, and their mother's time. They needed to be shown. And too much cuddling was, in any case, unhygienic.
The wheel came full circle, as the wheels of experts have a way of doing, and nowadays we are inveterate comforters and' picker-uppers. Demand-feeding is the dernier cri in the P•t..j tric salons, though fortunately, just 3S 11 mothers had the sense not to go all the waY Truby King, so most of us steer clear °J., wilder fanaticisms of demand-feeding. (All matters, after all, is an amicable arrang between mother and baby which will neither prostrate with nervous tension.) babies do, or so the older generation tell us' less than theirs did, though part of the , for this must go to the increase of knoio about artificial feeding, as well as to a humane approach to the babies themselves' But we are not without our share of folll superstition. The aspect of baby-care as trically charged for us as feeding was fat parents is toilet-training. (The silly euphe is typical of our approach to the subjecq. any group of young mothers together 0 remember with horror a fortnight I spent hotel catering for young families) and thefd discourse about pots and nappies interill'; with an enthusiasm and a passion which It as dull as the human excretory systern.og possibly warrant. Whether to start train birth or at a year old, when to leave Old napkins, why this one is wet at night 3% one during the day, whether TimmY's down at three is due to physical or cill° b, reasons; so we keep on until our infants ) and bladders seem to bestride the universdo all our real problems, private and public, into insignificance beside them. No v' THE SPECTATOR, SEPTEMBER 2, mothers find it so hard to re-adjust themselves to normal life when their children grow up. So far I have only met one mother who seemed entirely• to escape this unwholesome ob- session (I am an incurable worrier about it my- self) and she was an American lady who was so 3 bored by the whole subject that she refused to take any interest in it at all beyond changing her child's clothes. At three years he took the law into his own hands, started using the lava- tory like anyone else and managed beautifully. Which proves a good deal. Admittedly his mother had someone to do her washing for her, but then even the rest of us live in the age of the disposable napkin, an invention as good as anything since the wheel. 1,,,Rut it is worth speculating why most mothers '`r)me perfect bores on the subjects of micturi- 'len and defecation, which by any standards are way out on the fringe of minor human achieve- u,t,:rits' Why do they assume for us an importance ell normally we reserve for the serious issues of °lir lives? 1 suspect it is because, like our o mothers on the subjects of feeding and crying, the'have been dragooned into an attitude that is °roughly unnatural to us.
child this represents creative achievement. He is Ptr°,1t,d; elf What he has done.' One's instinctive f, tr.`"" to this is to say, if he thinks that's crea- of then the sooner he's disabused the better,' do‘witte quiet voice of the psychiatrist wears one coon' and gradually one is brainwashed to the ermist Point of view. distletnernber,' the books continue, 'never show ate Or disgust. Never suggest thaf this au -at‘ Process seems to you dirty or unclean, or hv‘,.111ItY give your child a feeling that all his Ili functions are dirty.' Well drilled, like t n°tir generation, in the phenomena of abnor- are rsYellolOgy, we know what that means, and S0brought to heel. o there we are, forbidden either to grumble hit scold, or ever to reveal to our little ones we really think, waiting upon their motions ;he rapture of a man about to behold the lidgment on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. uer phliiinderdennot to behave naturally and show what a ghastly nuisance and bore tiasth.d, the whole thing, we waste hours dis- atr-,?,4 with each other as if it was something A "Illy mattered. heytirl, is the charade really necessary? Increas- einr wonder if it is. Watching with morbid hild,illi°11 for my own or other people's f.aa„ look as cheered ; 'ell to I k d as God looked by iitY night, I can observe nothing but bored ka,tpeeefee, or, with slightly older infants, an the Problem at the indignities of the flesh. In for le Problem of toilet-training seems to be t Y that children don't find going to the „LY interesting, but are so busy b43, ZelY creative with their hands or gettitit the:th their social life that they can't be tit ed to waste precious moments on some- se trivial. And it is usually the child who, :.dtat the the smallest hint from its mother, sug- s performance is 'dirty' and indicates, htlilltbious distaste for it. It seems to add up to th ling hypothesis that' children are born Can sense of delicacy and good taste and all manage to 'do is to blunt it for them.
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