Handicaps of Childhood

by H. Addington Bruce

Havelock Ellis, the foremost authority on the psychology of sex, does not exaggerate when he assures us:

"Even if there were no other reasons against telling children fairy tales of sex instead of the real facts, there is one reason which ought to be decisive with every mother who values her influence over her child. He will very quickly discover, either by information from others or by his own natural intelligence, that the fairy tale that was told him in reply to a question about a simple matter of fact was a lie. With that discovery, his mother's influence over him in all such matters vanishes forever, for not only has a child a horror of being duped, but he is extremely sensitive about a rebuff of this kind, and never repeats what he has been made to feel was a mistake to be ashamed of. He will not trouble his mother with any more questions on this matter; he will not confide in her; he will himself learn the art of telling 'fairy tales' about sex matters. He had turned to his mother in trust, she had not responded with equal trust, and she must suffer the punishment, as Henriette Fürth puts it, of seeing 'the love and trust of her son stolen from her by the first boy he makes friends with in the street.'"[5]

Joy is a natural consequence of a child's affection for, and faith in, his parents. Resentfulness, bitterness, sullenness, are natural consequences of loss of affection and faith. The parents of a sullen child must always ask themselves if, through deception of any sort, they have forfeited the child's esteem for them. They must further ask themselves if, by intentional or unintentional unkindness of a persistent sort, they have embittered the child. They must also put to themselves the question: "Have I in some way erred so as to make my child sullen by the force of a bad example?" And, lastly, they must not forget to probe, through the aid of a skilled physician, for possible physical causes of mental and nervous stress.

If they do not adopt this course, if they allow the child to go on sulking, or if they increase his sulkiness by mishandling him, let me again warn them that they may be hopelessly limiting his chances for success and happiness in manhood. Character distortions of some sort are certain to result; even his bodily health itself may be affected. For, just as sulkiness often is a product of some physical disorder, so may it, in turn, become a cause of physical disorder. To sulk is essentially to be in a disturbed emotional state, and recent scientific research has established that such states, particularly if intense or long continued, have a highly unfavourable influence on the bodily organism. This has been most clearly shown in the case of anger and worry, the former of which always is, while the latter often is, basic in sulkiness.

All parents, indeed, ought to familiarise themselves with the physiology of anger and worry. Once really appreciative of the possible bodily effects of these emotional states, they would, on the one hand, be more careful to train their children early in emotional control, and, on the other, would be more chary about subjecting them to conditions involving emotional stress. Anger—and, equally, worry—is liable, for one thing, to derange profoundly the workings of the digestive organs. How profoundly it may derange them has recently been demonstrated conclusively by some remarkable scientific observations on animals and human beings.

A prime requisite to good digestion is a free flow of saliva and gastric juice when food is chewed. There must literally be a preparatory automatic "watering" of the mouth and stomach. Ordinarily, this begins as soon as food is taken into the mouth—if one is hungry, it begins at the mere sight of food. But it has been proved that, no matter how appetising the food, the digestive flow stops almost altogether under the influence of anger.

This was first demonstrated by a Russian physiologist, Pawlow, experimenting with dogs so conditioned that he could see into their throats and stomachs. When a dog was irritated—as by showing it a cat which it was prevented from attacking—the flow of saliva and gastric juice instantly stopped, and did not begin again for some time after the dog had been calmed. Even a slight degree of irritability in the animal was sufficient to stop gastric secretion.

The same result has been repeatedly recorded by other scientists experimenting with cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, children, and full-grown men and women. One observer, a medical man named Hornborg, had as a patient a small boy in whom disease had caused an external opening large enough to allow a view of the workings of the stomach. Doctor Hornborg found that if he gave this boy food, after first angering him, his eating of the food was not accompanied by a flow of the gastric juice, which ordinarily flowed promptly and freely.

And, besides stopping the secretory processes of the stomach, anger stops its muscular movements as well, and also the movements of almost all the alimentary tract. Hence, food eaten during or soon after an outburst of anger or petulance is not properly taken up by the alimentary canal for final digestion, absorption, and elimination. Which means, it need scarcely be pointed out, that every part of the body suffers in some degree through diminished nutrition. And certain specific discomforts are likely to be experienced—sour stomach, gastric pains, headache, and so forth.