"An Extraordinarily Pernicious Influence": The Discursive Figure of the Spoiling Grandmother before 1937.
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Duschinsky, Robbie https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2023-5328
Jacobvitz, Deborah
Peake, Lucy
Messina, Serena
Abstract
Discourses about the dangers of spoiling children and images of grandparents came together in nineteenth-century literature, with the literary figure of the spoiling grandmother emerging as familiar cultural currency. From there, it would become a concern for the generation of psychoanalysts after Freud, for whom the grandmother represented a dangerous supplement to the importance of the mother for a child's psychological development. The literary and the psychological uses of the figure of the spoiling grandmother then intersected in scientific and popular guidance for parents in the battle for authority regarding the right way to engage in childcare.
Description
Keywords
grandmothers, grandparents, literature, psychoanalysis, spoiling
Journal Title
J Fam Hist
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0363-1990
1552-5473
1552-5473
Volume Title
45
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Publisher DOI
Rights
All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (103343/Z/13/A)
Wellcome Trust New Investigator Award