Aspects of family mental health in Europe : contributors, D. Buckle ... [et al.].

Date:
1965
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Aspects of family mental health in Europe : contributors, D. Buckle ... [et al.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    96 ASPECTS OF FAMILY MENTAL HEALTH IN EUROPE the idea that the education parents give within the family might be studied objectively and treated as a branch of pedagogics. Pedagogics had, up to then, always been regarded as the preserve of professionals. In most civilizations parents had a right to do as they liked with their children, and instilled into them principles of morality and good manners as they saw fit, being entitled to do so by virtue of their absolute authority or proprietary rights over them, or by divine mission, and criticism could not be levelled against them on religious grounds. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century French philoso¬ phers, in particular Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attacked the principles of absolute authority, in the family as well as in politics. Education was seen as a duty, rather than as a right, of parents ; it was no longer regarded as just a passing on of rules but, in addition, as an activity that helps to bring out the child's innate abilities throughout his development — which it is incumbent upon parents to learn to understand. This conception provided the basis for methods of active education. It was also the basis of education for parents. It was in the USA — then a new country just freed from British control — that these democratic principles were tried out. But their application, running counter to tradition as it did, set puzzled parents a host of problems, and they needed advice on how to deal with them. The development of child psychology at the end of the nineteenth century and of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the twentieth provided the answers they needed. These went down extremely well with the public and were accordingly disseminated by a very wide variety of means: consultations, group discussions, courses and, later on, radio and television programmes. After the Second World War, a real movement sprang up here and there in Western Europe, but it got under way more slowly than in the USA and on a less extensive scale; it centred round the Paris School for Parents and Educators and went under that name. The name itself, be it said, frequently came in for criticism; it was blamed for putting off some parents by wounding their self-respect; and it was pointed out that the name suggested a didactic type of education whereas, as we shall see later on, the methods and spirit of the School are the reverse of didactic. The popular simplicity of the name, however, caused it to win the day. It was adopted by the large majority of countries which followed the lead given by the Paris School. It may now be said that, whatever its faults, this is the name by which the idea is known in an increasing number of countries. The development of the movement may be said to take the form, on the one hand, of a growth and diversification of the activities of