The Evolution of Childrearing
Tue, 2007-07-24 06:00 - Niels
by Lloyd deMause
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"Who would not shudder if he were given the choice of eternal death or life again as a child? Who would not choose to die?" ----St. Augustine |
Children throughout history have arguably been more vital, more gentle, more joyous, more trustful, more curious, more courageous and more innovative than adults. Yet adults throughout history have routinely called little children "beasts," "sinful," "greedy," "arrogant," "lumps of flesh," "vile," "polluted," "enemies," "vipers" and "infant fiends."1 Although it is extraordinarily difficult to believe, parents until relatively recently have been so frightened of and have so hated their newborn infants that they have killed them by the billions, routinely sent them out to extremely neglectful wetnurses, tied them up tightly in swaddling bandages lest they be overpowered by them, starved, mutilated, raped, neglected and beat them so badly that prior to modern times I have not been able to find evidence of a single parent who would not today be put in jail for child abuse. I have searched so hard during the past three decades for any exceptions to this extremely abusive pattern that I have offered a prize to anyone who could find even one "good mother" prior to the eighteenth century-the definition being one who would not today be incarcerated for child abuse. No one so far has claimed the prize. Instead, historians have assumed that my evidence for routinely abusive parenting must be terribly exaggerated, since if it were true it "would mean parents acted in direct opposition to their biological inheritance," and surely evolution "wouldn't be so careless...as to leave us too immature to care properly for our offspring."2
It is not surprising that the existence of widespread child abuse throughout history has been viewed with disbelief. 3 In this chapter, the historical evidence for each childrearing practice will be presented, focusing on the actual statements made by caretakers and children so that one can understand the intrapsychic reasons behind the abuse and neglect and show how parents have struggled against restaging their own childhoods and have slowly evolved the more loving, empathic childrearing which has been achieved by some families in the modern world.
Comments
disbelief
This evening I had a discussion with two friends of mine about deMause's work. The sensationalist that I am I confronted them with the following from :
Apart from the obvious challenge this ignited in both my male friends, they met it with great disbelief. One of the two being very much in awe with primitive societies and the extrapolation of that into prehistoric people, couldn't easily accept the idea child rearing getting worse the further we go back into the history. There must have been a hunter gatherers society that consisted merely of good parents.
I believe this is very much a projection of the own child history upon the history at large. There is a great wish among us to hold on to some idyllic place in childhood when everything was safe and good. That projected upon history of society and childhood in particular, leads to a Shangri-La in the distant past. For those of us who have been separated from our natural mothers there hardly ever is such a Shangri-La, that's why I am perhaps a little more susceptible to theories like deMause's.
Another point of critique was, if you can't find any evidence of good parenting, it doesn't mean there weren't any good parents, probably there were many of them, but they went unnotticed. That's an often heared criticism of deMause's conclusions. In "On Writing Childhood History" he writes extensively about this argumentus ex silenito. I don't think it holds ground to say, what we don't see is filled with what we like best. Somehow it is a consolidating idea somewhere in the past things were okay and only deteriorated ever since. I believe it has never been good and we still have a long way to go to make it good. If we look at the number of children in our own time, abandoned, neglected and abused, we'd rather not look at and easily forget about, it shouldn't surprise us at all this was only much worse in older days.
Belief-System
This can easily be turned around. Just as one believes there is Good, there must be Evil.
Children are taught at the earliest of ages the lessons of good and bad through stories of evil step mothers and fairy god-mothers. Why an adoptive parent thinks parenthood should be excluded from this black and white role-modeling is well beyond me!
poison containers
The historical family, it turns out, cannot remotely be termed a "patriarchy" until modern times. It is in fact a gynarchy, composed of the grandmother, mother, aunts, unmarried daughters, female servants, midwives, neighbors called "gossips" who acted as substitute mothers, plus the children.15 Fathers in traditional families may sometimes eat and sleep within the gynarchy, but they do not determine its emotional atmosphere, nor do they in any way attempt to raise the children. To avoid experiencing their own domination and abuse during childhood by females, men throughout history have instead set up androcentric political and religious spheres for male-only group-fantasy activities, contributing to the family gynarchy only some sustenance, periodic temper tantrums and occasional sexual service.
I don't know if I'm comforted or repulsed with this article. It explains so much about the use and abuse of children, and how mothers and fathers learn to resent their offspring, (that becoming the new-family tradition).
The sexual aggression (and deprivation) then becomes the vehicle to abuse.
Is it any wonder the child becomes the new "poison container"? Poison in my mind, being sperm, and anything that contains it.
poison
Would you agree that your association of "poison container" and sperm is in itself a reflection of being used as a poison container yourself? Isn't sperm, quite contrary to a poison (that kills), a vital substance (that continues life)?
From a power-perspective, he
From a power-perspective, he who can hurt the other more, wins (by domination). Anyone who has been raped knows unwanted sperm, no matter where it's put, can kill the human spirit.