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Dream Babies: Childcare Advice From John Locke to Gina Ford
Parents have long been bombarded with conflicting advice on how to bring up their babies: from Locke, Rousseau, and Truby King to Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford. Behaviourist warnings in the 1920s about physical contact ('Never hug and kiss them. Never let them sit in your lap') swung to Jean Liedloff's 'continuum concept' that babies should be wrapped round mum and fed on demand. Today enthusiasts for the 'family bed' are at war with Gina Ford's call for a return to the strict routines of pre-Spock days. Who is right and who is wrong? In this updated edition of her classic account of how and why the experts' advice has changed with changing times, Christina Hardyment analyses the anxieties of our own age and gives parents much-needed confidence in their own ability to choose the advice that best suits them and their babies.
- GenresParentingNonfiction
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
11 people are currently reading
675 people want to read
About the author
Christina Hardyment
42 books17 followersChristina Hardyment read history at Newnham College, Cambridge, and has twice held the Alistair Horne Historians' Writing Fellowship at St. Antony's College, Oxford. She is a writer and broadcaster with wide interests, and lives in Oxford, England.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 20, 2023
4.5 stars
that was extraordinarly fun at times and dreadful at others. regardless i gotta appreciate the effort that putting this (indeed) immense amount of contradictory advice takes. and i loved the author notes.
that was extraordinarly fun at times and dreadful at others. regardless i gotta appreciate the effort that putting this (indeed) immense amount of contradictory advice takes. and i loved the author notes.
January 17, 2015
There are some books, like a strong poison, that are so infuriatingly bad that you close them after three pages. Your relationship with the book is intensely painful, but mercifully brief. Other books, like a weak poison, seem like they should be tolerable and so you grind away for days and weeks, gradually despising the author more with every page, until you throw it aside in disgust and frustration. In so doing, the book that seems readable ultimately inflicts more total mental pain and suffering than the book that you actively hate.
If I start a book in earnest, I will finish it if I can. This is perhaps the fourth book I've encountered that I made a third of the way in and really just couldn't stomach for another page.
I was told this was like an anthology of what philosophers have had to say about childhood and child-rearing. It is not. It is a history of the parenting advice genre. It is thoroughly Anglocentric and makes no effort to be interesting or engaging - it might as well have just been an annotated bibliography.
There are perhaps three audiences for this book: 1. people specifically interested in narrow, rarefied manifestations of social anthropology, the history of psychology, and related fields, and 2. credulous new British parents who are so overwhelmed with conflicting parenting advice that they have actual anxiety about the issue, and 3. insomniacs.
If I start a book in earnest, I will finish it if I can. This is perhaps the fourth book I've encountered that I made a third of the way in and really just couldn't stomach for another page.
I was told this was like an anthology of what philosophers have had to say about childhood and child-rearing. It is not. It is a history of the parenting advice genre. It is thoroughly Anglocentric and makes no effort to be interesting or engaging - it might as well have just been an annotated bibliography.
There are perhaps three audiences for this book: 1. people specifically interested in narrow, rarefied manifestations of social anthropology, the history of psychology, and related fields, and 2. credulous new British parents who are so overwhelmed with conflicting parenting advice that they have actual anxiety about the issue, and 3. insomniacs.
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July 5, 2018Really interesting history of childcare advice that I unfortunately don't have the attention or energy to really read right now.
Highly recommended if you want another reason to get angry at white male philosophers whose ideas about children/childhood continue to shape contemporary parenting advice despite coming from men with literally no firsthand experience with children.
Highly recommended if you want another reason to get angry at white male philosophers whose ideas about children/childhood continue to shape contemporary parenting advice despite coming from men with literally no firsthand experience with children.
September 10, 2015
Whenever you see someone grow misty-eyed about the Good Old Days, I recommend coughing politely and sliding a copy of this book across the table. Dream Babies journeys into two centuries of see-sawing ideas regarding child care, and returns with contents that will surprise, amuse, and, not infrequently, horrify.
During the reign of James I, the Nurse’s Guide informed its readers that all Caligula’s vices were drawn from his wet-nurse’s milk. Queen Anne asked, with complete sincerity: ‘Would my child, the child of a king, suck the milk of a servant, and mingle the royal blood with the blood of a servant?’
The Puritans regarded crying as an expression of anger, and therefore of sin. No matter how tiny the sinners, they were to be dealt with as soon as possible. The New England Minister John Hersey advised his flock as follows:
‘Begin the work before they can run, before they can speak plainly or speak at all. Whatever pains it costs, conquer their stubbornness; break their wills if you will not damn the child. Therefore let a child from a year old be taught to fear the rod and cry softly. Make him do as he is bid if you whip him ten times running to do it; let none persuade you that it is cruel to do this.’
Infant mortality provoked similarly odd responses. The first hospital opened in England in 1741 was in part a response to the infant corpses and deserted babies littering the streets of London. By 1753, over a hundred infants a day were being offered to the hospital. The monk Pelagius decried this as encouraging ‘the progress of vulgar Amours/The breeding of Rogues and th’increasing of Whores.’ It was a popular view among intellectuals: in Emile, Rousseau advised ‘one half of all children who are born die before their eight year...This is nature’s law; why try to contradict it?’
Time generated different ideas, each fancying itself as an improvement. The behaviourist B.F. Skinner, author of the utopian novel Walden Two, proposed separating children from their parents as swiftly as possible. Radical feminists fare little better. Ann Oakley despised hospitals; Shulasmith Firestone wanted to see children grown and reared by technology, so nurseries of the future would be disturbingly similar to the fields in The Matrix.
There are worse examples, not cited here. ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children,’ Jesus insisted, ‘he cannot be my disciple.’ The wish to abolish the family unit altogether and replace it with communes - in which no child knows its own parents - has always been popular among intellectuals. Plato, Godwin, and Germaine Greer were all in favour of it.
This is a lively, informative survey, and a reminder that there is nothing current about our ongoing confusion: we’ve always been in a muddle.
During the reign of James I, the Nurse’s Guide informed its readers that all Caligula’s vices were drawn from his wet-nurse’s milk. Queen Anne asked, with complete sincerity: ‘Would my child, the child of a king, suck the milk of a servant, and mingle the royal blood with the blood of a servant?’
The Puritans regarded crying as an expression of anger, and therefore of sin. No matter how tiny the sinners, they were to be dealt with as soon as possible. The New England Minister John Hersey advised his flock as follows:
‘Begin the work before they can run, before they can speak plainly or speak at all. Whatever pains it costs, conquer their stubbornness; break their wills if you will not damn the child. Therefore let a child from a year old be taught to fear the rod and cry softly. Make him do as he is bid if you whip him ten times running to do it; let none persuade you that it is cruel to do this.’
Infant mortality provoked similarly odd responses. The first hospital opened in England in 1741 was in part a response to the infant corpses and deserted babies littering the streets of London. By 1753, over a hundred infants a day were being offered to the hospital. The monk Pelagius decried this as encouraging ‘the progress of vulgar Amours/The breeding of Rogues and th’increasing of Whores.’ It was a popular view among intellectuals: in Emile, Rousseau advised ‘one half of all children who are born die before their eight year...This is nature’s law; why try to contradict it?’
Time generated different ideas, each fancying itself as an improvement. The behaviourist B.F. Skinner, author of the utopian novel Walden Two, proposed separating children from their parents as swiftly as possible. Radical feminists fare little better. Ann Oakley despised hospitals; Shulasmith Firestone wanted to see children grown and reared by technology, so nurseries of the future would be disturbingly similar to the fields in The Matrix.
There are worse examples, not cited here. ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children,’ Jesus insisted, ‘he cannot be my disciple.’ The wish to abolish the family unit altogether and replace it with communes - in which no child knows its own parents - has always been popular among intellectuals. Plato, Godwin, and Germaine Greer were all in favour of it.
This is a lively, informative survey, and a reminder that there is nothing current about our ongoing confusion: we’ve always been in a muddle.
March 18, 2019
I wanted to read about different approaches to childcare throughout history. This book focuses on British and American childcare from about the 17th century to the 1980s. It's very fascinating and the book is full up with factoids and slices of life and quotes. It definitely helps me personally to keep in mind that there is no one agreed upon way, let alone "correct", to raise a child (besides lovingly).
My only complaint is that the book is very meandering. There could have been a lot more structure. On the other hand, there is a thorough index and bibliography.
My only complaint is that the book is very meandering. There could have been a lot more structure. On the other hand, there is a thorough index and bibliography.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews