The Too Modern Parent

Prudish parents have long been a favorite target of the psychiatrists. Puritanical homes are often blamed for giving children a neurotic attitude toward sex. But one psychiatrist thinks that modern parents can carry their modernism too far. Dr. Flanders Dunbar, 46, mother of a seven-year-old daughter and author of the 1947 bestseller Mind and Body (TIME, Oct. 6, 1947), sounds the warning in her new book, out this week, Your Child's Mind and Body (Random House; $2.95).

"In our gradual outgrowing of the hush-hush period," writes Psychiatrist Dunbar, "many of the so-called 'enlightened' parents have thought it would help to let their children see them in the nude, beginning at a very early age. Experiments and experience have indicated that this is not a good idea . . . Let your children see you undressed, but not until they have seen their own contemporaries undressed . . . The reaction to excessive modesty and repression led to excessive exhibitionism and produced neurotic children. There is a middle way." Other Dunbar suggestions:

> Find a middle ground between making all a child's decisions for him and overwhelming him with too much freedom of choice. She cites the case history of a nine-year-old boy who had been going to progressive schools which forced him to make decisions beyond his capacity. Asked to pick a new school, he suggested a military school because "I won't always have to be deciding what I want to do."

> Let a child find out, by the oldfashioned, hard way, that fire hurts; a little blister is better than interference with a crawling child's new-found freedom, or than making fire into something forbidden and therefore tempting.

>Don't spank as a routine punishment, but don't hesitate to use a "gentle slap" if the child gets hysterical and needs it "to refocus his own attention."

> Get over the notion that a baby is a kitten or puppy that needs nothing but feeding. Babies are people, says Psychiatrist Dunbar, and should be treated with respect right from the beginning.

> Babies can catch emotional upsets as well as colds in the head. A smart parent with sniffles puts on a mask before picking up the baby. Exposures to adult emotions may harm him even more than "a few extra germs." Dr. Dunbar's advice: stop a few seconds outside the nursery door, and calm down.

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