Problems of Childhood

My husband and I disagree about what to do with our six-month-old little girl when she cries. I want to pick her up and comfort her. My husband says I will turn her into a spoiled, demanding child. What do you think?

I think you are right and your husband is wrong. No child cries for nothing. The baby may be in pain, or lonely, or hungry; most likely she cries because she wants to be loved.

I wonder how much of the sickness of humanity is due to the ignorance of what a baby needs. No child is ever spoiled by having too much love. Your husband’s way will give her emotional starvation and fears, possibly a neurosis for life. Please understand: the child is not trying to bully you; the tot has a want, a wish, a longing that is not con­scious. Don’t thwart her young life.

Love her, and go on loving her.

Spanking

I sometimes spank my girl of three when she is naughty. Is it right or wrong to spank?

It is not a question of right or wrong; in a way it is a case of cowardliness, for you are hitting someone not your own size. I don’t suppose you hit your husband when he is being a nuisance. Is it because you wouldn’t dare? He might strike you back. Of course, you’re perfectly safe hitting your child of three. She can’t strike you back.

Spanking is an outlet for adult rage and frustration and hate. It would be interesting to discover if most spanking mothers are those who have an unsatisfactory sex life, or are frigid and therefore sex-hating. Happy mothers do not spank; they do not need to, for their state of well-being is unconsciously conveyed to the child. Tradition and public opinion postulate that children are automatically loved by their parents; but if a man and wife have ceased to love each other, the children may be reared in an unhappy and unloving atmosphere.

Many a child is naughty deliberately, but uncon­sciously. “Mother does not love me, and if I can’t get her love I’ll get her hate, for I must get some important reaction from her.”

Instead of spanking the child, it would be far better if the parent sat down and pondered what she herself was doing that was wrong. “Is my life only an existence? Did I sacrifice my career on the stage for the sake of these brats who make my life a hell?” “I am now getting on into my late thirties. My husband, I know, looks at younger women. . . Leave that thing alone, child. Take that!” No discontented mother can bring up her family well; she may inspire fear, but not love.

What happens when yon spank your child? For one thing, you put fear into the child, a thing no one has a right to do. For another, you lose his love. The contrite affection he shows after a heating is false, insincere, inspired by re­jection.

The worst mother is she who cries: “I don’t love you any more.” If there is such a thing as a mortal sin, that is it. Every child seeks love and security; every spanking is deep psychological shock. The poor child knows nothing about projection; he doesn’t realize that Father had a bad day at the office with his boss; he doesn’t realize that Dad’s anger is displaced anger— the anger he dared not show in the office. The child does not know that his mother may be sex starved, or that she may have developed a sex fixation on someone in her infancy— possibly her father— and is therefore incapable of having a good love life with her husband.

When the boy is spanked for coming in with mud on his clothes, he does not know that his mother is afraid of what the neighbors will think, for many a child is punished simply to satisfy neighborly opinion. You see it in railway carriages when the mite rushes along the corridor. “I must show these people that my child has been well brought up,” thinks the mother. . . . Spank!

I am not forgetting that children can be a nuisance to even the most balanced mother— their constant squabbling, their fingering of all the things the adult values. The squab­bling usually is inspired by jealousy; and hi most families, there is a lot of jealousy. Furthermore, the unconscious jealousy is increased by the mere fact that a parent cannot love, no matter what be says, every one of his children with equal fervor. A parent will prefer one child over another, and the child will feel this although he may not be con­scious of it.

If there is a remedy for spanking, it lies in self-examina­tion on the part of the irritated adult. Spanking is symbolic castration. It breaks the will, it induces hate, it can ruin a life. Millions who were spanked in childhood go on spank­ing their own children later on. Perhaps we punish because we are a Christian civilization. If you sin, punishment awaits you in the here and now, and Hell awaits you in the future.

Parents who spank are little people, hating people, cowardly people. I wish parents could acquire some con­sciousness of what they really are . . . poor, undeveloped, unhappy people clothed in a tawdry authority which they are too ungrownup to use decently. Most parents, alas, cannot help being as they are, for they are the victims and products of a home and school education that was ignorant of child nature.