I would like to receive a copy of the Journal of Psychohistory containing your article about 'German
child rearing'. It would be most appreciated. My address is:
Adelyn Siew
School of Architecture, Planning and Construction,
Curtin University of Technology,
GPO Box U1987 Perth,
Western Australia 6845,
Australia.
While I am at it, I should also introduce myself. I just joined the list yesterday and have already found it very resourceful.
I am a postgraduate student in the school of architecture in Curtin University. Currrently undertaking my PhD. I am studying the impact of domestic and institutional spaces on children. That is where histories of childhood come into play. I am employing Foucault's methods to trace the beginnings of the architectural type of school, home, and other children spaces.
I am sure this mailing list will be very helpful in my research.
Thank you. You will hear from me soon.
Adelyn
On Tue, 30 May 2000, Geoff Sherington wrote:
>
> I shall also check the website but would also appreciate a copy of the Journal-
>
> Professor Geoffey Sherington
> Dean
> Faculty of Education
> University of Sydney
> New SOuth Wales
> AUSTRLALIA 2006
>
>
>
>
> At 04:25 PM 5/29/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >Bridget: The issue is on its way to you via surface mail. Meanwhile, do
> >check out our 1,000-page website with lots of articles and chapters on the
> >history of childhood.
> >
> >Lloyd
> >
> >>I would be delighted to receive a copy of The Journal of Psychotherapy
> >>containing your very interesting article.
> >>
> >>My address is
> >>Bridget Whelan
> >>The Garden Flat
> >>96a Hazellville Road
> >>London N19 3NA
> >>
> >>Thank you
> >>----- Original Message -----
> >>From: "Lloyd deMause" <[log in to unmask]>
> >>To: <[log in to unmask]>
> >>Sent: Monday, May 29, 2000 4:47 PM
> >>Subject: German Childrearing
> >>
> >>
> >>> I have an extra box left over of Spring 2000 issues of The Journal of
> >>> Psychohistory with my 92-page article showing German childrearing in 1900
> >>> and how their extremely abusive childrearing practices were later
> >>inflicted
> >>> upon Jews during the Holocaust. If you would like a free copy of this
> >>> issue, just email me your postal address and I'll be pleased to send one
> >>to
> >>> you. A brief excerpt from the article is below.
> >>>
> >>> Lloyd deMause, Editor
> >>> The Journal of Psychohistory
> >>> [log in to unmask]
> >>>
> >>> "Nineteenth-century doctors condemned the practice of German mothers
> >>> refusing to breastfeed their babies, saying the pap made of flour and
> >>water
> >>> or milk was "usually so thick that it has to be forced into the child and
> >>> only becomes digestible when mixed with saliva and stomach fluids. At its
> >>> worst it is curdled and sour." Infants were so commonly hungry that
> >>"those
> >>> poor worms get their mouths stuffed with a dirty rag containing chewed
> >>> bread so that they cannot scream." Ende reports that for centuries "one
> >>> rarely encounters a German infant who is fully breastfed...Everywhere they
> >>> got their mouths stuffed with Zulp, a small linen bag filled with
> >>> bread...Swaddled babies could hardly get rid of these often dirty rags."
> >>> Mothers who could afford it sent their newborn to wetnurses-commonly
> >>called
> >>> Engelmacherin, "angelmakers," because they were so negligent toward the
> >>> children. The mothers complained, "Do you think I am a farmer's daughter,
> >>> that I should bother myself with little children? That a woman of my age
> >>> and standing should allow her very strength to be sucked dry by children?"
> >>> While English gentry began to nurse their infants themselves during the
> >>> seventeenth century, the mothering revolution had not yet really reached
> >>> Germany by the end of the nineteenth century. Visitors who wrote books on
> >>> German home life reported, "It is extremely rare for a German lady to
> >>> nourish her own child," and "It would have been very astonishing indeed
> >>if
> >>> a well-to-do mother had suggested suckling her own baby." Almost all
> >>> mothers who refused to breast-feed could have done so if they "seriously
> >>> wanted to," according to a 1905 German medical conference. Those who did
> >>> not gave "completely trivial reasons," such as "because it is messy,"
> >>> because they "didn't want to ruin their figures" or because breastfeeding
> >>> was "inconvenient. Even after their children returned from wetnurse,
> >>> "noble ladies showed not the slightest interest in their offspring" and
> >>> turned them over to nursemaids, governesses and tutors. The result was
> >>that
> >>> parents were often strangers to their children. When one German father
> >>> asked his child whom he loved the most and the child replied, "Hanne [his
> >>> nurse]," the father objected, "No! You must love your parents more." "But
> >>> it is not true!" the child replied. The father promptly beat him.
> >>> Mothers and other caretakers of newborn German babies were so
> >>> frightened of them that they tied them up tightly for from six to nine
> >>> months and strapped them into a crib in a room with curtains drawn to keep
> >>> out the lurking evils. Two centuries after swaddling had disappeared in
> >>> England and America, two British visitors described it as routine
> >>> throughout Germany:
> >>>
> >>> A German baby is a piteous object; it is pinioned and bound up like a
> >>mummy
> >>> in yards of bandages...it is never bathed...Its head is never touched with
> >>> soap and water until it is eight or ten months old, when the fine skull
> >>cap
> >>> of encrusted dirt which it has by that time obtained is removed...
> >>>
> >>> In Germany, babies are loathsome, foetid things...offensive to the last
> >>> degree with the excreta that are kept bound up within their swaddling
> >>> clothes...the heads of the poor things are never washed, and are like the
> >>> rind of Stilton cheese...
> >>>
> >>> When the children were finally removed from their swaddling bands after
> >>six
> >>> to twelve months, other restraint devices such as corsets with steel stays
> >>> and backboards continued their tied-up condition to assure the parents
> >>they
> >>> were still in complete control. The result of all this early restraint
> >>was
> >>> the same production of later violence in children as that obtained by
> >>> experimenters physically restraining rats and monkeys-marked by depletions
> >>> of serotonin, increases in norepinephrine levels, and massive increases in
> >>> terror, rage and eventually actual violence.
> >>> The fear of one's own children was so widespread in German
> >>families
> >>> that for centuries autobiographies told of a tradition of abandonment of
> >>> children by their parents to anyone who would take them, using the most
> >>> flimsy of excuses. Children were given away and even sometimes sold to
> >>> relatives, neighbors, courts, priests, foundling homes, schools, friends,
> >>> strangers, "traveling scholars" (to be used as beggars)-anyone who would
> >>> take them-so that for much of history only a minority of German children
> >>> lived their entire childhoods under their family roof. Children were
> >>> reported to be sent away to others as servants or as apprentices, "for
> >>> disciplinary reasons," "to be drilled for hard work," "to keep them from
> >>> idleness," because of a "domestic quarrel," "because it cried as a baby,"
> >>> "because his uncle was childless," etc. Scheck notes from his study of
> >>> autobiographies, "When their parents came to take them home, their
> >>children
> >>> usually didn't recognize them any more." Peasants gave away their
> >>children
> >>> so regularly that the only ones who were guaranteed to be kept were the
> >>> first-born boys-to get the inheritance-and one of the daughters, who was
> >>> sometimes crippled in order to prevent her from marrying and force her to
> >>> stay permanently as a cheap helper in the parental household. After two
> >>> children, it was said that "the parental attitude to later offspring
> >>> noticeably deteriorated [so that] a farmer would rather lose a young child
> >>> than a calf."
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >
> >
> >
"The main interest in life & work is to become someone
else you were not in the beginning. If you knew when
you began a book what you would say at the end, do you
think you would have the courage to write it?" Michel
Foucault
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