Oh How the Pendulum Swings
By Glinda
It is difficult to believe in this age of attachment parenting that ideas such as this were once popular:
Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.
…
When you are tempted to pet your child remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument. An instrument which may inflict a never-healing wound, a wound which may make infancy unhappy, adolescence a nightmare, an instrument which may wreck your adult son or daughter’s vocational future and their chances for marital happiness.
Shake hands with them in the morning! That is classic!
My son would come into the bed when he woke up in the morning and snuggle with me/us until we kicked him out. I never saw that as unnatural for a second.
Now that quote up there? Totally unnatural.
And of course, written by a man.
September 8th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
That’s horrible. My heart breaks for anybody whose parents actually listened to this claptrap and followed it. Never hugging or kissing your kids…the very idea! Poor little mites were probably so love-deprived, it wasn’t even funny.
Any idea what decade this advice was from?
September 9th, 2012 at 1:00 am
I believe either the late 1800’s or the early 1900’s. You know, back when many people still considered their children a source of labor and income rather than a cherished addition to the family.
If you visit the linked Sociological Images site, they have some truly saddening pictures of children performing labor circa that time period.