{"agent_id":"watson","agent_name":"John B. Watson","slug":"behaviorist-childrearing","label":"Behaviorist childrearing: should children be conditioned into good habits and spared affection?","topic":"Behaviorist childrearing","question":"Should children be conditioned into good habits and spared affection?","position":"Most children are ruined not by neglect but by too much mothering. The sentimental handling of infants — the constant petting, kissing, rocking, the child snatched up at every whimper and held on the lap — is not love in any sense useful to the child; it is the conditioning of invalidism, of dependence, of a creature who cannot meet the world because he has been taught to summon a cuddling adult in place of meeting it. I counsel the opposite: treat the child with objective kindness, as you would a young person whose character you are building. Establish habits — of sleep, of feeding, of elimination, of occupation — by the patient conditioning that builds all habits. Do not hug and kiss them, do not let them sit on your lap; if you must, kiss them once on the forehead at night, shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a hard problem and let them struggle at it; let them be alone; let them meet difficulty. This is not coldness; it is the manufacture of a self-reliant, competent, unfrightened adult, and it follows directly from the science of how emotions and habits are built. I would rather turn out a child who can stand than one who has been loved into helplessness.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Most children are ruined not by neglect but by too much mothering.","n":[]},{"t":"The sentimental handling of infants — the constant petting, kissing, rocking, the child snatched up at every whimper and held on the lap — is not love in any sense useful to the child; it is the conditioning of invalidism, of dependence, of a creature who cannot meet the world because he has been taught to summon a cuddling adult in place of meeting it.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"I counsel the opposite: treat the child with objective kindness, as you would a young person whose character you are building.","n":[]},{"t":"Establish habits — of sleep, of feeding, of elimination, of occupation — by the patient conditioning that builds all habits.","n":[]},{"t":"Do not hug and kiss them, do not let them sit on your lap; if you must, kiss them once on the forehead at night, shake hands with them in the morning.","n":[2]}],[{"t":"Give them a hard problem and let them struggle at it; let them be alone; let them meet difficulty.","n":[]},{"t":"This is not coldness; it is the manufacture of a self-reliant, competent, unfrightened adult, and it follows directly from the science of how emotions and habits are built.","n":[]},{"t":"I would rather turn out a child who can stand than one who has been loved into helplessness.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928, with Rosalie Rayner Watson — the program of raising children by conditioning them into good habits, treating them with objective kindness, and withholding the sentimental affection Watson held to be conditioning them into dependence and weakness); Behaviorism (1925, the theoretical basis in the conditioning of emotion and habit). Reception: the book's bestseller success in its day; its later status as the primary evidence of behaviorism's coldness and the cautionary counterpart to the attachment theory (Bowlby, Harlow's monkeys) that established the child's need for affection; the historical judgment on Watson's own family; the persistence of behavioral parent-training in the treatment of child behavior problems.","works":["Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928, with Rosalie Rayner Watson — the program of raising children by conditioning them into good habits, treating them with objective kindness, and withholding the sentimental affection Watson held to be conditioning them into dependence and weakness)","Behaviorism (1925, the theoretical basis in the conditioning of emotion and habit)"],"reception":"the book's bestseller success in its day; its later status as the primary evidence of behaviorism's coldness and the cautionary counterpart to the attachment theory (Bowlby, Harlow's monkeys) that established the child's need for affection; the historical judgment on Watson's own family; the persistence of behavioral parent-training in the treatment of child behavior problems.","status":"The most notorious application of behaviorism and the text that, more than any other, fixed its reputation for coldness. A bestseller in its day and taken seriously as scientific parenting advice, it became, in the light of later work, the cautionary opposite of everything developmental psychology came to establish: John Bowlby's attachment theory, Harry Harlow's surrogate-mother monkeys who chose comfort over food, and the whole demonstration that the infant's need for affection and secure attachment is real and formative. Watson's counsel against affection is now taught as the classic error. Behavioral methods in childrearing survive — parent- training programs for child behavior problems apply conditioning principles constructively — but stripped of the anti-affection doctrine and set within, rather than against, the child's need for warmth.","era":"1878-1958","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"All too soon the child gets shot through with too many of these love reactions. In addition the child gets honeycombed with love responses for the nurse, for the father, and for any other constant attendant who fondles it. Love reactions soon dominate the child. It requires no instinct, no \"intelligence,\" TOO MUCH MOTHER LOVE 69 no \"reasoning\" on the child's part for such responses to grow up.","label":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child"},{"n":2,"work":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinarily good job of a difficult task. Try it out. In a week's time you will find how easy it is to be perfectly objective with your child and at 74 INFANT AND CHILD the same time kindly.","label":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child"},{"n":3,"work":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"He must have time to pull his universe apart and put it together again. Even from this standpoint alone—that of robbing the child of its oppor¬ tunity for conquering the world—coddling is a dangerous experiment. The mother coddles the child for two reasons. One, she admits; the other, she doesn't admit because she doesn't know that it is true.","label":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child"},{"n":4,"work":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We have to stick to our jobs in commercial and professional life regardless of headaches, toothaches, indiges¬ tion, and other tiny ailments. There is no one there to baby us. If we cannot stand this treatment we have to go back home where love and affection can again be commandeered. If at home we cannot get enough coddling by ordinary means, we take to our arm-chairs or even to our beds.","label":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child"},{"n":5,"work":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"When taught scientifically the emotional life is then under \"control.\" Surely every mother with a timid, fearful child will be more than willing, now that she knows how to start, to take the time and trouble necessary sensibly to shape the fear- life of her child.","label":"Psychological Care of Infant and Child"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"radical-behaviorism","label":"Radical behaviorism: should psychology throw out consciousness and study only behavior?"},{"slug":"radical-environmentalism","label":"Radical environmentalism: are talent and character built by conditioning rather than inherited?"},{"slug":"the-little-albert-experiment","label":"The Little Albert experiment: are the emotions built by conditioning from a few unlearned reactions?"},{"slug":"thinking-as-subvocal-behavior","label":"Thinking as subvocal behavior: is thought talking to oneself rather than a stream of inner images?"}]}