The Evolution of Childrearing

[pdx.mothernurture]

http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/...od/chch8dm.htm

Also accessible at: http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln...ldrearing.html

:Puke

It does talk about male and female genital mutilation, too.

Circumcision for boys might be thought of as less traumatic since it involves only removal of the foreskin, a far less painful and serious mutilation. Yet in many cultures circumcision of boys is quite painful, as when Moslem boys are circumcised between the ages of 3 and 7 in a painful, bloody ceremony, after which "he is placed on his mother's naked back [so] that his bleeding penis presses against her. His mother dances along with the other women until he stops crying."145 That this ceremony is connected with the incestuous feelings of the mother is apparent from the fact that genital mutilation is far more likely found in societies where the little boy sleeps with his mother while the father sleeps elsewhere.146 Circumcision of boys-practiced from Egypt and Africa to Peru and Polynesia147-makes them into "little mothers," with the peeling away of the foreskin uncovering the glans so that it can act as a maternal nipple. That circumcision of boys is still practiced so regularly in America is a testimony to the continuing ubiquity of parental assault on the sexuality of children.148

Jen

[pdx.mothernurture]

Clitoridectomy, like all sexual mutilations, is, I believe, an act of incest. If it is incest when a father rapes a daughter, it is also incest when parents assault their children by cutting off, sewing up, burning, flaying or gashing their genitals. In all these cases, the child is being used for the sadistic sexual pleasure of the parent. In fact, circumcision ceremonies are often followed by drinking parties that end in intercourse, so sexually arousing is the circumcision---in some areas, the traveling circumcizer is actually accompanied by some prostitutes, who know how sexually excited villages become after the ceremony. Therefore, the practice of sexually mutilating children's genitals---one of the most widespread rituals in the world--by itself makes incest a near-universal trait.

The History of Child Abuse
by Lloyd deMause
The Journal of Psychohistory 25 (3) Winter 1998

Wow.

Jen

[pdx.mothernurture]

Other articles that discuss male and female circumcision as an sexual mutilation, child abuse, incest, origins of terrorism, etc:

http://www.psychohistory.com/

Lloyd deMause is director of The Institute for Psychohistory, which is in New York City and has 17 branches in various countries. He is editor of The Journal of Psychohistory and president of the International Psychohistorical Association. He was born in Detroit, Michigan on September 19, 1931. He graduated from Columbia College and did his post-graduate training in political science at Columbia University and in psychoanalysis at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He has taught psychohistory at the City University of New York and the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training, is a member of the Society for Psychoanalytic Training, and has lectured widely in Europe and America.

He has published over 80 scholarly articles in such periodicals as The Nation, Psychology Today, The Guardian, The Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, The Journal of Psychohistory, Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, Psyche, Kindheit, Texte zur Kunst, Psychologie, Psychologos: International Review of Psychology, Psychoanalytic Beacon and Psychologie Heute. He is on the editorial board of Familiendynamik, The International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine and Mentalities/Mentalites. His books include The History of Childhood, A Bibliography of Psychohistory, The New Psychohistory, Jimmy Carter and American Fantasy, Foundations of Psychohistory, Reagan’s America and The Emotional Life of Nations. His work has been translated into nine languages. He has three children: Neil, Jennifer and Jonathan.

"Lloyd deMause is probably the first scholar who has made a thorough study of the history of childhood without glossing over the facts..."
-Alice Miller

"Lloyd deMause is the scholarly godparent of the recovery movement..."
-Atlantic

"The richest decoding of the impulses of our age."
-The Nation

"Brilliant...bold...challenging...heavily documented"
-New York Review of Books

"An extraordinary book...it would be a tragedy if it were confined to the classroom"
-Boston Globe

"Crucial in understanding how the wounded child is archetypal of our time."
-John Bradshaw

"A fascinating psychological view of the Reagan years."
-WCBS-TV

"Neither history nor psychiatry can ever be the same again. A turning point in the integration of the social sciences."
-Reuben Fine, Ph.D.

"A pioneering effort."
-Psychoanalytic Quarterly

"A very important book."
-B.B.C.

"A masterpiece."
-Charles Socarides, M.D.

"Confronting, ambitious, provocative and comprehensive"
-The Historian

"An endlessly daring innovator..."
-Fortune

"A remarkable piece of scholarly literature."
-Kindheit

"A pioneering contribution...signals the birth of a new and exciting field."
-Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

"Authoritative, original...highly recommended."
-The Historian

"Just magnificent--an extremely important contribution to the knowledge of man."
-Erich Fromm

"I am tremendously impressed with your genuine approach."
-Erik Erikson

"An important achievement."
-Melford Spirto, Ph.D.

“The source of most human violence and suffering has been a hidden children's holocaust throughout history, whereby billions of innocent human beings have been routinely murdered, bound, starved, raped, mutilated, battered and tortured by their parents and other caregivers, so that they grow up as emotionally crippled adults and become vengeful time bombs who periodically restage their early traumas in sacrificial rites called wars.”

Lloyd deMause

This guy's new to me, but apparently known among non-spankers, attached parents, and gentle discipline advocates. I'm not sure about contact info but there's links to various related discussion lists on his website.

Jen

[pdx.mothernurture]

Another fascinating historical quote, different author:

"It is quite natural for the child's soul to want to have a will of its own, and things that are not done correctly in the first two years will be difficult to rectify thereafter. One of the advantages of these early years is that then force and compulsion can be used. Over the years children forget everything that happened to them in early childhood. If their wills can be broken at this time, they will never remember afterwards that they had a will, and for this very reason the severity that is required will not have any serious consequences."

-- J. Sulper - Essay on the Education and Instruction of Children (1748)
Quoted in Alice Miller's For Your Own Good

"Their consciousness, however, has not registered the realities of their situation. By repressing not only the pain but also their anger and desire for revenge, they have managed to banish consciousness, even idealizing the custom. Today, as a result of their repression, they can justify the procedure as harmless and necessary. They cannot recall their repressed anger and have never grieved about what happened to them. Consequently, they inflict the same ordeal on their children without wishing to acknowledge what they're doing to them."

Alice Miller
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence
p. 74, Meridian, New York 1993

"In my last book I have shown how intelligent, religiously minded educators still advise people, as Luther did 400 years ago, to use the rod today so that tomorrow the child " will be loved by God ". In his important book, " Spare the Child ", Philip Greven has shown how widespread sadistic and destructive methods of child-rearing still are, particularly those concealed under the mantle of religiosity. This is not only true of Christian child-rearing. 100 million Islamic women living today have had their genitals mutilated as children. Millions of Jewish or Arab children are, for the sake of dogma, subjected to circumcision, as infants or at an advanced age. Such cruelty is only possible with the total denial of the child's sensibility. But who can seriously say today that a child does not feel? In India, millions of girls have been raped as "brides" and this in the name of the religiously sanctioned doctrine of marriage. Countless initiation rites, condoned by religion, are nothing more than the sadistic mistreatment of children. The history of art abounds with such scenes, yet no one bats an eyelid. We have been brought up not to feel. As soon as individual human beings begin to feel, however, many things will inevitably change."

http://www.alice-miller.com/interviews_en.php?page=1

***THIS IS A QUOTE, PLEASE DON'T DISCUSS THE RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS IN THIS FORUM. THANK YOU***

Why would we have “wrong, worthless” feelings? Why are feelings like hatred and anger feared and fought as “negative” or “bad” and why should they be forced out of our minds and bodies? Why is the question – where do anger and hatred come from – not asked? Why were we born with such problematic deficits? It reminds me of circumcision where religious, family and medical authorities pretend that certain parts of a boy’s or girl’s sexual organs are unwanted, worthless and wrong, so they must be cut away like a sacrifice to satisfy some “higher purpose” and “higher power.”

http://www.alice-miller.com/articles...nid=106&grp=12

Jen

[TigerTail]

wow jen, you are on a roll!

[jessjgh1]

Oh, gee, I don't know if I can bring myself to read that....
I skimmed and started a bit after the picture of the forced full body swaddling... Uugh.

Jessica

[Super Pickle]

Okay, I love Alice Miller, but Lloyd DeMause...I don't know, I sometimes ask myself if this guy is for real. I mean, he can spellbind you with his theories, but when he makes blanket statements like (paraphrased) "Before modern times, there's not one example in the historical record of non-abusive parents," I just have to scratch my head. I mean, Jan Hunt studied people who, presumably, have been living the same way for generations, and she certainly got a different impression of their parenting. I have a really hard time believing that cosleeping in traditional societies was just conceived to serve parents' perversions. That said, I'm glad he and Alice Miller have both explored possible motivations for the forced genital cutting of children.