Free Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum Page B

“addressed to the average mother of this country.” The government was not, she emphasized, trying to preempt doctors. “There is no purpose to invade the field of the medical or nursing professions, but rather to furnish such statements regarding hygiene and normal living as every mother has a right to possess in the interest of herself and her children.”
    The “Infant Care” pamphlet covered everything from how to make a swaddling blanket to how to register a birth. It discussed diapers, creeping pens (which we today call playpens), meals from coddled eggs to scraped beef, teething, nursing, exercise, and, oh yes, “Habits, training, and discipline.” After all, “the wise mother strives to start the baby right.”
    The care of a baby—according to the federal experts—demanded rigid discipline of both parent and child. Never kiss a baby, especially on the mouth. Do you want to spread germs and look immoral? (This part, obviously, straight from the mouth of Luther Holt.) And the government, too, wanted to caution mothers against rocking and playing with their children. “The rule that parents should not play with the baby may seem hard, but it is without doubt a safe one.” Play—tickling, tossing, laughing—might make the baby restless and a restless baby is a bad thing. “This is not to say that the baby should be left alone too completely. All babies need ‘mothering’ and should have plenty of it.” According to federal experts, mothering meant holding the baby quietly, in tranquility-inducing positions. The mother should stop immediately if her arms feel tired. The baby is never to inconvenience the adult. An older child—say above six
months—should be taught to sit silently in the crib; otherwise, he might need to be constantly watched and entertained by the mother, a serious waste of time in the opinion of the authors. Babies should be trained from infancy, concludes the pamphlet, so “smile at the good, walk away from the bad—babies don’t like being ignored.”
    Universities also began offering scientific advice to untutored parents. Being research institutions, they tended to reflect John Watson and the zeitgeist of experimental psychology. Reading them today is curiously like reading a pet-training guide—any minute, the mother will be told to issue a “stand-stay” command to her toddler. In the Child Care and Training manuals, published by the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Welfare, the authors advised that the word “training” refers to “conditioned responses.” They assured their readers that when a mother smiles at a baby, she is simply issuing a “stimulus.” When the baby smiles back, he is not expressing affection. The baby has only been conditioned to “respond” to the smile.
    Further, parents should be aware that conditioning is a powerful tool, the Minnesota guidebook warned. For instance, if a child falls down and hurts herself, mothers and fathers should not condition her to whine. They might do that if they routinely pick her up and comfort her. Treat injury lightly and “tumbles will presently bring about the conditioned response of brave and laughing behavior,” the guidebook advised. Watson had declared that babies feel only three emotions: fear, rage, and love (or the rudiments of affection), and the Minnesota psychologists agreed. They warned that it is easy to accidentally condition unwanted fears. The researchers cited the common practice of locking children in a dark room to punish them. They recommended against it. This, they said, only conditions the child to fear darkness. A stern word, a swift swat, is so much better. The scientists also suggested that parents try not to worry about their children and their safety so much: Fear conditions fear. “The mother who is truly interested in bringing up children