the last few years the child has become the centre of interest. funny as it may sound, it may almost be asserted that we had just rediscovered the child. congresses are held, artists devote their talents to portraying the life of the child, expositions acquaint us with the many aspects of the advances that have been made in the new knowledge. is it any wonder then that we have suddenly been made acquainted with the abuses of children? that we have shudderingly learned that there are children who are tortured by their own mothers? there were loud cries of horror. the fountain of humanity became a broad stream which must drive the mills of a new social organization in the interests of the defenceless child. who would withhold his approval of this movement? who would oppose it? for truly there is no sadder spectacle than a child tortured to death by its own parents. the whole instinct for race preservation cries out against it....
but this theme may also be regarded from another angle, and i purpose showing from the point of view of the physician and the pedagog that the reverse of abuse, viz., excessive affection, has a dark side, that it, too, is capable of [pg 162]ruining a child’s life and condemning an innocent being to lifelong suffering.
at a private gathering of physicians not long ago the subject of the last congress for the protection of children was discussed from its more serious as well as lighter aspects. a viennese neurologist ventured the following remark: “i regard it as a great misfortune if a woman’s affection for her husband is expended upon her child. a misfortune for humanity, for, in this way, the number of nervous persons will be incalculably increased.”
one is strongly inclined at first energetically to attack this opinion. what! a tender, affectionate bringing up will make a child neurotic? who can prove that a happy childhood results in an unhappy life? shall parents be afraid to show their children love? to hug them, kiss them, pet them? is not nervousness rather the sequel to draconic sternness, tyrannical compulsion?
nonsense! nonsense! i shall attempt to answer these obtrusive questions seriatim.
but, first, one remarkable fact has to be postulated. parents are really becoming more and more affectionate from year to year. such fanatically affectionate parents as are quite common now were formerly the exception. to-day the parents’ thoughts all centre around the child: how to feed it, bring it up, dress it hygienically, harden it, how to instruct it in sexual matters.... a flood of books and [pg 163]magazines scarcely suffices to meet the tremendous concern about these matters. can this emanate solely from the fact that the pressing movement for emancipation of woman has displaced the woman’s interest from the man to the child? i think that herein the neurologist is in error. that cannot possibly be the sole cause.
the cause for the hypertrophied love of the child is adduced from the consideration of those cases which even in former times offered instances of an exaggerated parental affection amounting to doting love. the over-indulged child was almost invariably an only child whom popular speech designates a “trembling joy.”
it is to be regretted that most modern families are made up of such “trembling joys.” “neo-malthusianism” has infected the whole world. in consequence of the employment of innumerable and more or less generally employed anti-conceptives the birth rate is steadily declining. “two-children families” is the rule, and families with many children—especially among the well-to-do—the exception. even the vaunted fecundity of the germans which is always being held up as a model to the french will soon be a thing of the past. in former decades 1,000 married women in berlin gave birth to 220 children and from 1873 to 1877 the number even rose to 231. since then the birth rate is declining from year to year, so that in 1907 1,000 women only had 111 children. in other large cities matters are even worse than in berlin [pg 164]in this regard. but it would be decidedly wrong to infer that there is a diminution in the number of marriages. in prussia the number of marriages from 1901 to 1904 was at the rate of 8 per 1,000, whereas in 1850 it was somewhat less, to wit: 7.8 per 1,000. sociologists have detected in this state of affairs a great danger for the mental prospects of the race inasmuch as matters in this regard are much better in the country and, consequently, they say, the progeny of the farmer class will in a not remote period tremendously exceed the intelligent descendants of urban people in number. the country will get the best of the city and not vice versa. but we must not wander away from our subject. let us take this fact for granted: the “two-children system” is the cause for the excessive parental affection we have described. but wherein is this dangerous?
i shall not attempt here a detailed statement of the well-known dangers. we all know that coddled children very often become helpless, dependent persons, that they cannot find their place in life, and do not seem to be armed against adversity. it seems superfluous to dwell at greater length on this. of greater significance is the phenomenon that the exaggerated affection lavished on the child creates a correspondingly large need for affection in it. a need for affection that is tempestuous in its demand for gratification. as long as these children are young so long is this demand fully satisfied. the [pg 165]parents, and especially mothers, are so overjoyed at their children’s manifestations of love that out of their overflowing hearts they reward them by overwhelming them with caresses. thus the measure of affectionate demonstrations rises instead of gradually sinking. and now the time comes for the child to go to school. and for the first time in its life it stands in the presence of the will of a stranger who demands neither petting nor love, only work done without grumbling. how easily this situation gives rise to conflict! the child thinks it is not loved by the teacher, it is terrified by a harsh word and begins to cry. school becomes odious to it; it learns unwillingly. it asks for another school and for other teachers. if its wish is gratified the same thing is soon repeated.
matters get much worse when these children grow up. they have an unquenchable craving for caresses. from them are developed the women who kill their husband’s love by their own immoderate love. every day they want to be told that their husbands still love them. daily—nay, hourly—they wish to be the recipients of sweets, loving words, private pet names and kisses without number. the men, on the other hand, who had been so coddled in their childhood, are only in the rarest instances satisfied with their wives; sooner or later they seek to compensate outside of the home for the insufficient affection shown by the wife; or they transfer this requirement upon the children who [pg 166]thus become seriously (though not congenitally) burdened. but even this is not the worst.
the greatest dangers of excessive affection are known to only very few persons. they consist in a premature excitation of the erotic emotions. we are so prone to forget unpleasant experiences. hence comes it that most adults have no recollection of their own youthful erotic experiences. parents especially are very forgetful in this regard—so much so that their forgetfulness amounts almost to a pathological condition bordering on hysterical amnesia. thence comes it that most mothers will take an oath on their daughters’ innocence and fathers on their sons’ purity. they talk themselves into the belief that their children are exceptions, that they are incredibly simple, still believe in the stork myth and other similar stupidities.
that the sexual enlightenment of the child is an important problem and of far-reaching significance for its whole life is proved in numberless books and essays dealing with the subject. we are told that open scientific instruction should take the place of secret knowledge obtained from turbid channels. very fine! but the world must not believe that the child’s first erotic knowledge is awakened as a result of such instruction. that is a widespread superstition. the sexual life of the child does not begin with puberty, the old books to the contrary notwithstanding, but with the day of its birth.
on the occasion of a sad criminal trial in [pg 167]which children were charged with being prostitutes, public opinion was horrified at the wickedness of these poor creatures. and yet most of them were victims of their environment. does any one really believe that such occurrences are rare exceptions? that is a myth. we talk ourselves into the belief that the little child that is still unable to speak is not receptive to erotic impressions. how do we know this? the brain of a child is like a photographic plate that greedily catches impressions, independently of whether they are intelligible or not, impressions whose influence may be operative throughout its life. as we know, there is a large group of investigators which traces all perverse manifestations of the sexual impulses back to a fixation of the earliest erotic experience. erotic stimulation can subsequently be brought about only by way of an association with this early impression. this explanation certainly does seem to fit the curious phenomenon known as fetichism. in this way children’s experiences influence their whole life. in sexual matters human beings behave with incredible na?veté. they close their eyes and will not see. frank wedekind is perfectly right in deriding a world that has secrets even from itself. so infantile sexuality is a secret which every intelligent person knows.
if parents only kept this in their mind’s eye! then it would not happen that children ten years of age and older would be permitted to [pg 168]sleep in their parents’ bedrooms that the anxious father and mother might watch over the gentlest breath of their precious darlings. these parents do not want to consider the possibility that the children may in this way receive impressions which may prove very injurious to them. many a case of obstinate insomnia in childhood or of nocturnal attacks of apprehension is explained in this way. i have repeatedly cured sleepless children by the simple remedy of ordering them to sleep in separate bedrooms.
let us assume then that all children are susceptible to erotic stimuli and that such stimulation may harm them. for the later a person’s conscious sexual life begins the greater the prospects of his becoming a healthy, mentally well-balanced individual. among the factors capable of permanently arousing erotic emotions we must include excessive affection. between the affections of one who loves and of a mother there are really no differences. both kiss, caress, fondle, hug, embrace, pet, etc. that the excitement is transmitted to the same central organs is obvious.
in this way the child receives its first erotic sensations from its nurse. interpret it as we may the nurse, the attendant, the mother, the father are the child’s first love, the first erotic love, as our psychoanalysis has convincingly demonstrated. but this must not be interpreted to mean that i wish to condemn the affectionate management of children. on the contrary! [pg 169]a certain quantity of affection is, as a matter of fact, essential to the normal development of the individual. but the affection lavished on them must not be excessive. for if it is the child will be prematurely brought into a condition of erotic overstimulation. it grows older and begins to feel the power of education. to restrain and curb the force of the natural impulses powerful inhibitions are erected. as a reaction to the premature sexual stimulation there begins a remarkable process which may be designated as “sexual repression.” this repression may succeed so well that even the child forgets its early experiences or the repression does not succeed and the individual’s erotic requirements grow from year to year. in the latter case there develops in the child a serious psychic conflict between sexual longing and sexual renunciation and thus the soil in which a neurosis may grow is prepared. perhaps the conflict is the neurosis.
we shall mention only in passing that such exaggerated affection begets in many children the habit of securing for themselves a certain amount of pleasurable sensations by way of certain auto-erotic actions. it is not possible, nor necessary, to enter into a detailed discussion of these matters here. for most people know that our experiences in childhood influence our whole life. but it is a tragic commentary on human strivings that excessive parental love may bring sickness upon the child, that a happy present is replaced by an unhappy future, that [pg 170]the roses a mother strews in her child’s path only later show their thorns.
we cannot say it too often: we fuss too much with our children. there is too much theory in this matter of bringing up children. we pay too much attention to our children. let us leave them their peaceful childhood, their merry games, the wondrous product of their untiring phantasy. let us clearly realize that with our excessive affection we give ourselves a great deal of pleasure but that at the same time we are doing the children a great injury. let no one discourage mothers from being affectionate to their children, from expending loving attentions on them, from making their youth as pleasant as possible. but the parents’ affection should not expend itself mechanically. it should be a uniformly warm fire that only warms, kindles no fire, and bursts into a bright flame only on life’s great holidays.
