The Psychology Book

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Parenting systems

BEFORE

1945 American psychoanalyst René Spitz reports on the disastrous effects of bringing up children in institutions.

1951 John Bowlby concludes that an infant requires an intimate and continuous relationship with his mother.

1958 US anthropologist Melford Spiro writes Children of the Kibbutz, insinuating that Western child-rearing methods, with the focus on the mother as the main carer, work best in all cultures.

AFTER

1973 American psychiatrists Charles M. Johnston and Robert Deisher argue that communal child-rearing provides advantages that few nuclear families offer.

While running a center where disturbed children ...