mona gleason

MONA GLEASON Psychology and the Construction of the

444 The Canadian Historical Review

existed with a variety of needs and priorities. This was especially true after the Second World War, when large numbers of eastern and southern European refugees from Poland, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, and other wartorn countries were grudgingly allowed entry into Canada.4 Cultural traditions regarding family life and parenting deemed


evident, and supposedly universal.=11 In other words, by describing, defining, and diagnosing family problems in terms of


an educator, a trainer; he is not a non-medical psychiatrist.=16 Despite Bois=s insistence, the social function of psychology remains the subject of scholarly debate. Pioneering studies on the impact of the helping professions on family life in the American context carried out by scholars such as Christopher Lasch introduced the suggestion that psychology=s ideological and professionalizing goals B like other


discourse of psychiatrists and psychologists.25 In the United States, similar concerns were expressed over family stability in the postwar world and similar solutions were proposed.26 Commenting on the cyclical tendency of hegemonic social groups simultaneously to problematize, rehabilitate, and regenerate the unacceptable in their specialized discourse, James Gilbert concludes that


appropriated by journalists, social commentators, doctors, and governmental officials to explain how the family had been dislocated during the war.33 A whole spectrum of familial pathologies was discussed using psychological jargon, from unwed motherhood, unfulfilled housewives, absent fathers, child abuse, and family desertion to the threat of the sexual deviant, often assumed to be homosexual, stalking young children.34 The causes of problems were described in various ways: poor parenting, the absence of the father as the traditional familial authority figure, the death of a relative or family friend in the war; the increased bombardment in movies, radio, newspaper, and, later television, of the horrors of battle; the absence of working mothers from the home; the increased freedom, and concurrent disobedience and rebelliousness, of teenagers; and increasing urbanization.35 Speaking to his listening audience over the cbc in 1954, psychologist David Ketchum suggested that


rising divorce rates following the end of the war was repeated throughout the country. At the end of the war, divorce rates nationally had tripled: in 1941, 2471 divorces were granted in Canada, and by 1946 the number had risen to 7683.41 By 1948, however, the number dropped to 6881, and, in 1949, fell further to 5934.42 Between 1948 and 1958, despite population growth, the number of divorces in Canada did not rise above 6300.43 Few commentators acknowledged the steady decline in divorce rates after the early postwar years. Nor did they acknowledge the same increases in divorce, and the same lamentations about the state of the family, which accompanied the end of the First World War.44 The same assumption that prolonged separation of spouses resulted in marital estrangement and increased extra-marital activity underscored discussions of rising divorce and separation rates in both eras.45 Lorne Stewart, a Toronto judge, interpreted the post-Second World War increase in divorce as symptomatic of the larger problem of general social breakdown, rather than as simply an increasingly popular solution to unhappy marriages. Signalling society=s


people, and by 1946, 10.9 marriages per thousand people took place.52 The marriage rate was, by the end of the war, unprece-dented.53 Between 1951 and 1952, however, marriage rates gradually declined from 9.2 to 8.9 per thousand population.54 In 1958, statisti-cians pointed out that 7.7 marriages per thousand population took place, the lowest marriage rate in twenty years. This trend continued in 1960, with 7.0 marriages per thousand.55 Although more Cana-dians were marrying than in the darkest days of the Depression,


pointed out that with the lessons of the war and heightened awareness of psychology, husbands and wives learned to shift between dominant and submissive roles, depending on the situation at hand. Detailing the specific workings of such an agreement, Blatz suggested,


over the years,


Rather than criminalizing suspect behaviour, psychologists were much more eager to reinterpret it using their terms B to focus on the emotional and behavioural pathology of juvenile delinquency. As was the case with the problems of marriage and divorce, psychologists portrayed juvenile delinquency as symptomatic of impaired psychological development. Moreover, they often traced this impaired psychological development back to the family:


of children. The crux of the matter was clear and was passed on to parents: children needed stable, affectionate homes in order to develop normally. In the absence of traditional forces of cohesion, families required new reasons to stay together. If the central bond of the family was no longer legal, religious, or economic, Ketchum pronounced, it was psychological and emotional.90 That the modern family was based on emotional ties was not, however, a new claim in the postwar era.91 This myth was, nonetheless, perpetuated through psychological discourse. Using the war as a powerful rhetorical backdrop, Samuel Laycock used this strategy when he wrote:


wonder how she could have given birth to such a little monster.=95 Understanding and appreciating children, this particular example suggests, depended to a large extent on an a priori set of normative standards and expectations. Informed parents anticipated well ahead of time what to expect in their growing child B they had a blueprint for normalcy. This presentation of a growing child=s development, however, necessarily oversimplified the process. In turn, this oversimplification necessarily homogenized children B all normal children at a particular age displayed the same tell-tale characteristics. The paradox inherent in this aspect of psychological discourse is exemplified in a parenting pamphlet issued by the Department of National Health and Welfare: When your baby arrives you will soon realize that he is not just a little pink bundle to be fed and changed and cuddled, but a tiny individual ... He has psychological needs B mental, emotional and spiritual needs, just as much as physical needs ... If, as a parent, you have some idea of what is considered normal behaviour at various age levels, you will find bringing up your children much easier. There is much to be learned.96 The normal child, in psychologically informed advice such as this, personified an oxymoron: he or she was an individual who conformed to external standards. Psychologists seemed unaware of this inherent contradiction as they admonished parents to treat children as individuals by ensuring that they conformed to a well-scripted repertoire of normal behaviour. It is also suggested here that parents who utilized psychological knowledge in


and even improve their own psychological maturity. A high school textbook used in Canadian classrooms, for example, instructed young readers to steer clear of immature personality traits, such as


mothers naturally made gifted parents, was nevertheless denied in psychological discourse. Even before the war, psychologists were carving out a niche for their knowledge claims by asserting that the proper approach to mothering was learned from psychologists; it did not exist innately.104 Blatz proclaimed in 1928 that while it was


active part in their lives need not feel that home is a woman-dominated place where a man is either too stupid or too aloof to find his way around.=113 These comments suggested that the


young children.123 Furthermore, it reinforced the idea that while a mother=s attention was useful, it was a father=s crowning guidance that made the real difference in a child=s normal development. Constructing


combined with widespread abuse and lack of emotional support in residential schools, robbed many Native parents of the entire experi-ence of parenting and family living well into the postwar period.132 Moreover, far from preparing them to be good parents, the residential school experience left a generation of young Natives emotionally traumatized. The normal family, according to psychological discourse, made giving and receiving love and affection its primary function; it per-formed

mona gleason

Documents

family life

family problems

family friend

family stability

family desertion

divorce rates

world war

social commentators