Feminists of the interwar era had high hopes that a new scientific understanding of childhood would transform the practice of motherhood. The British novelist Winifred Holtby, for example, rejoiced that “during the past twenty years children in Europe and America have been considered, propitiated, indulged and studied as perhaps they never had been before.”43 But the literature of child psychology was difficult to interpret, for psychologists often contradicted each other. Behaviorists claimed that the child had no essential nature, but was entirely shaped by its rearing. This might be taken to imply that each child’s development was unique. But developmental psychologists such as Arnold Gesell insisted that the child developed in stages that were measurable by tests and statistics, and that too much emphasis on individuality could disrupt this normal process. As for psychoanalysts, they believed that the child’s personality was produced by mysterious subconscious forces which parents could not hope to understand. Considering how confusing these prescriptions often were, it is not surprising that mothers failed to live up to them, or that handbooks for parents denounced maternal malpractice.
Feminists turned these to their own purposes, arguing that women whose own individual development had been stunted by discrimination and disadvantage could never become good mothers. For example, the British socialist Wilma Meikle traced mothers’ deficiencies to the restrictions imposed by conventionally female upbringing. The average mother felt obliged to behave as “a little pocket saint. . . There is no fun left in her. She accepts motherhood in a spirit of self-immolation and sadly braces herself to meet its claims, instead of rejoicing in it in a spirit of simplicity and being a jolly comrade to her children.”44 In Vera Brittain’s novel Honourable Estate, the heroine Janet was trapped in an unhappy marriage, and was forced to bear a child in whom she saw “only the unwelcome image of his father” Obviously the child, Denis, became the innocent victim of his mother’s anger and resentment.45 In a story later cited by Simone de Beauvoir, Katherine Mansfield likewise described a young mother who was traumatized by involuntary childbearing. “She was broken, made weak, her courage was gone through child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was, she did not love her children. . . . No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled her through and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmth left to give them.”46
Among all the various forms of frustration that perverted maternal love, that of the sexual instinct was most often deplored. Dora Russell traced mothers’ fussy preoccupation with hygiene to the prudish aversion to bodily processes that was fostered by traditional female education. And most of the sexual problems suffered by adults were laid at the door of mothers who had been unable to overcome their own inhibitions sufficiently to provide information to their children. There were still respectable households, complained the French suffragist and anti-prostitution activist Ghenia Avril de Sainte-Croix, where anyone who even mentioned “purity, morality, sexual misconduct, love, marriage, or even babies” would be considered danger — ous.47 Too often, warned Adele Schreiber, the “unhealthy prudery” of mothers conveyed the message that the naked body and the sexual organs were “something especially dirty, something to be ashamed of,” instead of giving the necessary explanations.48
Though convinced that maternal behavior could be distorted by sexual repression, feminists preferred environmental to psychoanalytic explanations, which often came too close to biological determinism and gender stereotyping. Mothers’ emotional problems were often attributed to the oppression and disadvantage that they suffered. A novel entitled The Judge, by the former suffrage activist Rebecca West, portrayed Marion, a woman whose personality was warped by the experiences of seduction, abandonment, and a forced and loveless marriage. Her sexualized relationship with her infant son, Richard—“she became vexed with love for him, and longed to clasp him, to crush him as she knew she must not”—was the pathological result of these destructive experiences.49 The psychoanalyst Karen Horney, who was not only a disciple but also a perceptive critic of Freud, argued that the psychology of women was shaped not by innate “penis envy,” but by social factors such as male supremacy and female subordination in the family. Maternal overinvestment in children, moreover, arose from the general tendency of women who were deprived of other avenues to self-fulfillment to seek all their satisfaction in love and personal relationships.50
The French physician and socialist activist Madeleine Pelletier, whose profession put her in touch with the latest psychological theories, interpreted a news story about a jealous mother who had killed her daughter-in-law in similar terms. “Who is guilty?” asked Pelletier, “no one, or rather society. If the opportunities of women were not so limited, then mature women would lead an active life which would distract them from household intrigues and from morbid passions.” Freud merely confirmed Pelletier’s long-standing conviction that “the family is not a paradise. . . hatred in the family is more the rule than the exception. The family should disappear.”51
But most feminists did not share Pelletier’s pessimism, but rather imagined new forms of family life that would insure what Dora Russell identified as the child’s first right, “the right to be happy.”52 Many were inspired by Adler, who claimed that confidence and self-esteem were the most important characteristics of healthy children. Adele Schreiber, a strong advocate of Germany’s new democracy, believed that confident children grew into responsible citizens. She advised enlightened mothers to reject “ancient traditions of subordination and obedience, which forbade the child to think independently,” to respect their children’s individuality, and above all not to “break, oppress, intimidate or corrupt them.”53 The Swedish Alva Myrdal, a child psychologist who in 1936 founded the Social Pedagogical Institute, a training school for early childhood teachers, also believed that child-rearing should promote democratic values. “In a modern democracy, there is no one to obey, neither lord nor priest. . . . Why should we raise children for a society that no longer exists?”54
But where was the child’s true “individuality” to be found? How to resolve the contradiction between theories that attributed children’s personality wholly to parental influence and others that admonished parents to respect their children’s independence? The answer given by psychologists was that independence could not be equated with mere spontaneity or permissiveness. Like other traits, it needed to be inculcated by correct conditioning, and this required a demanding combination of pedagogical involvement and emotional distance. According to her daughter, Alva Myrdal’s approach to child-rearing aimed both to create perfect human beings and to encourage independence—aims that sometimes conflicted: “Alva’s ideal of liberty turned out to jar with the ideal of perfecting us.”55
Proper child-rearing required the restraint of most traditional forms of maternal behavior. The mother-child bond, once idealized as the epitome of love and selflessness, was now associated with a harmful overprotectiveness that might well undermine children’s confidence and produce the dreaded “inferiority complex.” Mothers who comforted their children whenever they fell down, warned the advice column of Vernet’s periodical, La Mere Educa — trice, actually made them more anxious. “On the contrary, isn’t it better to discourage their tendency to be too sensitive, and to expect them to deal with minor accidents with courage?”56 According to Dora Russell, over-involved mothers produced emotional cripples: “gradually he [the child] will lose his adventurous impulses and think that dangers lurk around every corner and refuse to go anywhere without his mother. This is her triumph. Now she knows that he indeed loves her.”57 But not only excessive indulgence, but also excessive strictness could deform the childish personality. As Melanie Klein advised, “bad behavior” must also be accepted. “A child that can never act up and can never be rude is never normal,” wrote a contributor to Schreiber’s anthology on child-rearing, and concluded that such a painfully inhibited child would never meet the standard of independent, self-sufficient, and rational adulthood that modern society required.58
The rearing of self-reliant children required a judicious mixture of permissiveness and vigilance. Intellectual curiosity was an important trait, but only if carefully directed. Feminist child-rearing experts insisted that children must be given access to scientific knowledge that would enable them to explore the physical world, and allowed to play without too much interference from parents. However, almost all urged that warlike toys must be banned from the playground. In fact, pacifists assigned to mothers an important role in preventing future wars. Vernet’s journal, La Mere Educatrice, which devoted as much space to peace as to child-rearing, published two pictures— one of a boy with a toy gun, the other of a mother mourning her son—over a caption. “Mothers! Before you give your child a toy gun—think what guns do to mothers!”59 Parents were also exhorted to encourage gender equality, particularly in active sports. Images of healthy outdoor play paid tribute to this era’s cult of physical vitality: “today we prize the well-rounded training of both mind and body,” said Schreiber, “and particularly for girls.”60
As we have seen, feminist educators condemned the prudish custom of keeping children ignorant of sexuality and reproduction. But they certainly did not advise mothers to leave children to explore sexuality on their own— a form of negligence that was widely believed to have disastrous consequences! A large body of literature advised parents how to present the right information at the right time. As we have seen, prewar literature on sex education focused on the procreative role of females, often to the total exclusion of the father’s contribution. This tradition was continued by the French physician Germaine Montreuil-Straus (whose activities as an educator and public health worker have been explored in chapter 7). In 1925, she published a children’s coloring book entitled Maman dis-moi (Mother, Tell Me). Making no mention whatever of fathers, the book described pregnancy, birth, and lactation, and ended with a picture of a grateful son embracing his mother.61
The Scandinavian birth-control crusader Elise Ottesen-Jensen urged parents to discuss the father’s role, albeit in rather vague terms. “Father planted a little seed in your own little mother,” she advised them to say, “there it lay and slept in Mamma’s care.”62 In 1942, the work of Ottesen — Jensen as well as that of other reformers such as Alva Myrdal, Ada Nilsson, and the members of Social Democratic women’s groups resulted in the incorporation of sex education classes in Swedish public schools.63
Sexual enlightenment was portrayed as a sensitive task that demanded psychological insight and a talent for storytelling. The British birth-control reformer Marie Stopes, whose Mother, How was I Born? was among the era’s most influential sex-education manuals, advised parents to start their teaching early, when the child was too young to feel embarrassment, and to stress the positive side of sexuality. Questions should be answered “truly, and if possible beautifully.” If properly instructed, the child would find this story “thrilling, and also solemn.”64
And the parent’s task did not end with the child’s physical maturity. For increasing opposition to child labor and heightened educational expectations extended the period of childhood through adolescence. The prescribed response to adolescent development was a restrained but nonetheless highly vigilant concern. Mothers must respect the child’s growing need for independence and avoid harsh judgments based on the outmoded standards of the past. “At no time do parents know their children as little as during adolescence,” wrote Schreiber, “but children never need their parents so much as between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.”65
However hopeful, these prescriptions for the renewal of parent-child relationships expressed an underlying anxiety about the mother-child relationship. Mother-love, once idealized as a flowing font of love and altruism, was now regarded as a force that was dangerous if not kept under tight control. Two personal accounts—those of Alva Myrdal’s two children, Jan Myrdal and Sissela Bok—suggest that this era’s scientific child-rearing methods may not always have achieved their aim, the production of confident and happy children. Jan portrayed his mother, despite her pedagogical expertise, as an inept parent who “simply was not good with children” and a cold and arrogant person.66 Sissela found Alva delightful, but aloof—an attitude that the young girl sometimes found disturbing, and sometimes enabling. She added that her busy mother showed good judgment by hiring a warm and vivacious young woman to be a “substitute mother” to her and her younger sister.67 And many feminist writers on child-rearing would also have approved of this decision. If mothers were indeed flawed, then one could argue that their influence should be diluted by the involvement of other adults—fathers or expert care-takers—in the care of children. After all, why should childrearing, which was an important social task, be entrusted only to mothers? This will be the theme of the next two sections.