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SCIENTIFIC CHILD REARING

Fewer Children, More Attention

In the 1920s families were smaller than in the past and continued to get smaller: the average number of children born to a woman who lived the usual number of childbearing years was 3.56 in 1900, 3.17 in 1920, 2.5 in 1925, and 1.8 in 1935. There were fewer children in the population and more adults per child. These changes meant that adult attention could be focused on the individual child. For most families by the 1920s, children lived at home until they were fully grown and attended school longer than any generation in the past. The experience of children of the same age group was increasingly uniform. Childhood now tended to be quite leisured, sheltered from adult concerns, and focused on preparation for adulthood.

"Sacralized" Children

New attitudes toward children and new economic conditions affecting them freed children from work and other adult responsibilities by the 1920s. After the turn of the century, children were "sacralized"—that is, invested with new religious and sentimental meaning—and they were held above financial considerations. Child labor laws signaled this change: the laws removed children from the labor force, in part because it became more efficient to educate children than to employ them. Child labor laws also reflected the idea that the only acceptable work for the sacralized child was instructional and educational in nature. Even less well-to-do parents were expected to subsidize their children's expenses by providing them with an allowance. Children were economically "useless" but emotionally "priceless," their value measured in the parents' joy in a child's smile or goodnight kiss.

Democratic Families

Smaller families also became more democratic. The formerly rigid roles that defined interaction between children and parents were relaxed in the 1920s, giving way to more spontaneous expressions of ideas and emotions throughout the family. The decline in the number of children per family and the focus on emotional satisfaction and nurturance made hierarchically defined relationships between parents and children—and, indeed, between the parents themselves—both unnecessary and undesirable.

Watson's Influence

Despite the movement toward more open, affectionate parent/child relationships, the advice of child psychologist John B. Watson influenced many parents. Watson, a behavioral psychologist, promoted a strict model of child rearing. His model appealed to parents in the mid 1920s since it offered a "scientific approach" to parents anxious about raising children equipped to deal with modern life. Watson believed that the child's personality was shaped through systematic habit training early in life. He was a most severe behaviorist, asserting that families overindulged their children and that affection was responsible for social maladaption. He advised parents to curb their displays of affection. Mothers were instructed to enforce a strict regimen of habit training and to resist their emotional responses to the child. Watson's harshness limited his popularity, but his behavioral emphasis on rigid adherence to "scientific" rules and schedules of feeding, toilet training, and discipline influenced the behavior of many middle-class parents in the 1920s.