The evolution of childhood

Infanticidal Mode

300

The myth here only reflects reality. Some facts are more important than others, and when parents routinely resolved their anxieties about taking care of children by killing them, it affected the surviving children profoundly.

Abandoning Mode

1000

Once parents began to accept the child as having a soul, the only way they could escape the dangers of their own projections was by abandonment.

Ambivalent Mode

1300

when the child was allowed to enter the emotional life of the parents, it was still a container for dangerous projections which theyshould be molded. At this stage there was an increase in the number of instruction manuals

Intrusive Mode

1700

The child was no longer so full of dangerous projections, and rather than just examine its insides with an enema, the parents approached even closer and attempted to conquer its mind, in order to control its insides, its anger, its needs

Socializing Mode

1800

As projections continued to diminish, the raising of a child became less a process of conquering its will than of training it, guiding it into proper paths, teaching it to conform, socializing it. In this stage the father for the first time begins to take more than an occasional interest in the child, training it, and sometimes even relieving the mother of child-care chores.

Helping Mode

1900

The helping mode involves the proposition that the child knows better than the parent what it needs at each stage of its life, and fully involves both parents in the child’s life as they work to empathize with and fulfill its expanding and particular needs.