Democratic babies? Françoise Dolto, Benjamin Spock and the ideology of post-war parenting advice

ABSTRACT

This article looks at the political implications of a subject not always thought of as directly political, but which has an important ideological component: child-rearing advice. The period after 1945 offers an important example of how this topic can interact with developments in political ideology. This article takes the example of France, with substantial comparative reference to the US and Britain. It argues that the mid-twentieth century was characterized by a move from a hygienist and behaviourist approach to child rearing to a more liberal, humanist approach informed by Freudian psychoanalysis. This occurred significantly later in France – in the 1970s – than in Britain or the US, where it is associated with the years immediately after World War II. Through a comparison of two celebrated childcare experts who epitomized the change – Françoise Dolto in France, Benjamin Spock in the US – the paper explores the reasons for this temporal discrepancy. It shows that Anglo-American experts believed that the widespread application of psychoanalytic theory would help produce democratic citizens and ward off the dangers of authoritarian personalities. In France, psychoanalytic approaches became allied with conservative Catholic views of the family and women’s roles, with implications for family policy into the twenty-first century.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The number of buildings and institutions named for Dolto reached 230 by 1999. Recent examples include a new school near Eurodisney in 2013, and a Gentilly hospital unit in 2014.

2. D. Pleux, Génération Dolto (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2008).

3. S. Fishman, From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution: Gender and Family Life in Postwar France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

4. D. Herzog, Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 2.

5. Herzog, ibid.; M. Shapira, The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); C. Robcis, The Law of Kinship: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and the Family in France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); T. Zahra, ‘“The Psychological Marshall Plan”: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II’, Central European History 44/1 (2011), 37–62.

6. See e.g. C. Urwin & E. Sharland, ‘From Bodies to Minds in Childcare Literature: Advice to Parents in Inter-war Britain’, in R. Cooter (Ed.) In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare in England, 1880–1940 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 174–199.

7. E.g. W. Graebner, ‘The Unstable World of Benjamin Spock: Social Engineering in a Democratic Culture, 1917–1950’, The Journal of American History 67/3 (1980), pp. 612–629; T. Maier, Dr. Spock: An American Life (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2003); J. Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London: Virago, 2006).

8. L.E. Holt, The Care and Feeding of Children (New York: D. Appleton, 1894); J.B. Watson, Psychological Care of Infant and Child (New York: Allen & Unwin, 1928); Truby King, Feeding and Care of Baby (London: Macmillan, 1913).

9. On Isaacs see S. Bar-Haim, ‘The liberal playground: Susan Isaacs, psychoanalysis and progressive education in the interwar era’ History of the Human Sciences 30/1 (2017), pp. 94–117; and M. Shapira, ‘Speaking Kleinian’: Susan Isaacs as Ursula Wise and the Inter-War Popularisation of Psychoanalysis’, Medical History 61/4 (2017), pp. 525–547.

10. P.J. Graham, Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children (London: Karnac, 2009), p. 98; Idem., ‘Susan Isaacs and the Malting House School’, Journal of Child Psychotherapy 34/1 (2008), pp. 5–22.

11. A.C. Aldrich & M.M. Aldrich, Babies are Human Beings: An Interpretation of Growth (New York: Macmillan, 1938). See C. Hardyment, Dream Babies: Child Care from Locke to Spock (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), pp. 213–220.

12. S. Alexander, ‘Primary Maternal Preoccupation: D.W. Winnicott and Social Democracy in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain’, in S. Alexander & B. Taylor (Eds) History and Psyche: Culture, Psychoanalysis, and the Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 149–172, ref. p. 158.

13. Maier, Dr. Spock, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 106.

14. A. Prost, Éducation, société et politiques: une histoire de l’enseignement en France de 1945 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1997); M. Thomson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); E. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (London: Collins, 1975); E. Zaretsky, Political Freud: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

15. Prost, Éducation, société et politiques, op. cit., pp. 26–27.

16. S. Isaacs, The Nursery Years (London: Routledge, 1929), pp. 2–3.

17. Isaacs, ibid., pp. 2–3.

18. Quoted in Hardyment, Dream Babies, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 159.

19. M. Shapira, ‘Psychoanalytic criminology, childhood and the democratic self’, in M. Ffytche & D. Pick (Eds), Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 73–86.

20. M. Shapira, The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 1.

21. S. Alexander, ‘D.W. Winnicott and the social democratic vision’, in Ffytche & Pick (Eds) Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism, pp. 114–130, Ref. 19, p. 117.

22. Graebner, ‘The Unstable World of Benjamin Spock’, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 615.

23. B. Spock, Baby and Child Care (London: Bodley Head, 1958), pp. 405–406.

24. Graebner, ‘The Unstable World of Benjamin Spock’, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 613.

25. J. Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916), p. 93.

26. N. Noddings, ‘Dewey’s philosophy of education: a critique from the perspective of care theory’, in M. Cochran (Ed) The Cambridge Companion to Dewey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 265–287, here p. 279.

27. Dewey, ‘Freedom and Culture’, in J. Boydston (Ed) John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1952, vol.13, 1938–39 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), p. 187.

28. Noddings, ‘Dewey’s philosophy of education’, op. cit., Ref. 26, p. 280.

29. Maier, Dr. Spock, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 97–98.

30. L. Farley, ‘Analysis on Air: A Sound History of Winnicott in Wartime’, American Imago 69/4 (2012), pp. 449–471.

31. Spock, Baby and Child Care, op. cit., p. 405.

32. Bar-Haim, ‘The liberal playground’, op. cit, p. 96.

33. Maier, Dr. Spock, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 102.

34. Spock, Baby and Child Care, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 570.

35. Graebner, ‘The Unstable World of Benjamin Spock’, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 619–622.

36. Spock, Baby and Child Care, op. cit., Ref. 23, p. 365.

37. Spock, Ibid., p. 321.

38. M. Shapira, ‘Psychoanalysts on the Radio – Domestic citizenship and motherhood in postwar Britain’, in J. Regulska & B.G. Smith (Eds) Women and Gender in Postwar Europe: From Cold War to European Union (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp.71–86, ref. pp. 81–82.

39. Alexander, ‘D.W. Winnicott and the social democratic vision’, op. cit., Ref. 21, pp. 124–125.

40. Alexander, Ibid., p. 127.

41. Zahra, ‘Psychological Marshall Plan’, op. cit., Ref. 5.

42. M. Mazower, ‘Ideas that fed the beast of fascism are flourishing today’, Financial Times 07/11/2016.

43. Maier, Dr. Spock, op.cit., Ref. 7, p. 353.

44. G. Steinem, ‘After Black Power, Women’s Liberation’, New York Magazine, April 4 1969.

45. F. Dolto, Lorsque l’enfant paraît, vol. I (Paris: Seuil, 1977), p. 144.

46. Dolto, ibid., p. 84.

47. F. Dolto, Tout est langage (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), p. 50.

48. See F. d’Ortoli & M. Amram, L’École avec Françoise Dolto: le rôle Du désir dans l’éducation (Paris: Hatier, 1989).

49. F. Dolto, La Cause Des enfants (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1985), pp. 399–434.

50. Archives Françoise Dolto ‘LLP 14‘, week 43.

51. Dolto, Cause Des enfants, op. cit., Ref. 49, p. 410.

52. F. Dolto, La Cause Des adolescents (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1988).

53. Dolto, Cause Des enfants, op. cit., Ref. 49, p. 13.

54. Archives Françoise Dolto ‘LLP 9‘. Formerly a private collection, in 2015–16 these archives were moved to the French Archives Nationales.

55. Details taken from Dolto’s autobiographical works Enfances (Paris: Seuil, 1988) and Autoportrait d’une psychanalyste 1934–1988 (Paris: Seuil, 1989), also C. Percheminier (Ed) Lettres de jeunesse: correspondance, 1913–1938 (Paris; Gallimard, 2003), and Y. Potin (Ed) Françoise Dolto, Archives de l’intime (Paris: Gallimard, 2008).

56. Maier, Dr Spock, op. cit., Ref. 7, pp. 8–10.

57. See I. Grellet & C. Kruse, Des Jeunes Filles Exemplaires: Dolto, Beauvoir et Zaza (Paris: Hachette, 2004).

58. L. Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne: Textbooks and the Socialization of Girls in Modern French Primary Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984), pp. 82–83.

59. F. Boverat, ‘Il faut faire naître’, Revue de l’Alliance Nationale pour l’Accroissement de La Population Française 143 (1924), pp. 163–171.

60. A. Ohayon, ‘L’École des parents ou l’éducation des enfants éclairée par la psychologie (1929–1946)’, Bulletin de psychologie 449 (2000), pp. 635–642; F. Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy et l’éternel féminin: contribution à une sociologie politique de l’ordre Des corps (Paris: Seuil, 1996), pp. 181–184.

61. E. Pichon, le Développement psychique de l’enfant et de l’adolescent. Évolution normale, pathologie, traitement. Manuel d’étude (Paris: Masson, 1936), p. 25.

62. Pichon, ibid., p. 260–261.

63. Pichon, ibid., p. 277.

64. Pichon, Ibid., p. 276.

65. R. Laforgue, ‘Schizophrénie et schizonoia’, Revue Française de Psychanalyse 1/I (1927), pp. 6–23.

66. Laforgue, Ibid., p. 11.

67. R. Laforgue, ‘A propos de la frigidité de la femme’, Revue Française de Psychanalyse 8/II (1935), pp. 217–226; ref. p. 222.

68. R. Laforgue, ‘La Névrose Familiale’, Revue Française de Psychanalyse 9/III (1936), pp. 327–360, ref. p. 344.

69. M. Mannoni, le Premier Rendez-vous avec le psychanalyste (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), p. 56.

70. Dolto, preface to Mannoni, ibid., p. 22–23.

71. A. Ohayon, ‘L’émergence d’un mouvement sexologique français (1929–1939), entre hygiéniste, eugénisme et psychanalyse’, PSN – psychiatrie, sciences humaines, neurosciences 1/4 (2003), pp. 50–61.

72. L. Bonnafé et al, ‘La Psychanalyse, idéologie réactionnaire’, La Nouvelle Critique (juin 1949), pp. 57–72.

73. S. Moscovici, La Psychanalyse: son image et son public (Paris: PUF, 1976), p. 314.

74. Herzog, Cold War Freud, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 33.

75. S. Garcia, Mères sous influence: de La cause Des femmes à La cause Des enfants (Paris: La Découverte, 2011).

76. Garcia, Ibid., p. 42.

77. Garcia, Ibid., p. 91ff.

78. L. Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 63.

79. On this episode see J. Mowitt, Radio: Essays in Bad Reception (Stanford: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 105ff; S. Gunther, The Elastic Closet: A History of Homosexuality in France, 1942-present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), ch. 2.

80. See Robcis, Law of Kinship, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 153.

81. Robcis, Ibid., ch. 6.

82. C. Dolto, ‘GPA: Nous préparons la barbarie à venir’, La Manif Pour Tous 51, 06/05/2015, http://la-manif-pour-tous-51.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/cdolto-gpa-nous-preparons-la-barbarie.html.

83. C. Dolto, ‘Ayez votre médecin de famille’, Vrai 3, 15 novembre 1941, pp. 28–29; C. Dolto, ‘Nos enfants. Savez-vous leur parler?’, Vrai 4, 1 décembre 1941, p. 23.

84. Herzog, Cold War Freud, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 1.