Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Therese Oneill
Cover design by Lauren Harms
Cover photograph by Vintage Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Author photograph by Tina Heinrich
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ISBN 978-0-316-48189-2
E3-20190327-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Welcome, Unfit Mother
1. How Do I Prepare My Sacred Vestibule to Best Receive My Husband’s Life-Germ?
The Ins and Outs of Fruitful Conception
2. How Much Violence and Lager Should My Fetus Be Exposed to as a Means to Ensure Sturdy Character?
And Other Pregnancy Tips
3. If Suffering in Birth Is Ordained by God, May I Bite a Towel During Delivery Without Offending Him?
On the Occasionally Fatal Privilege of Childbirth
4. My Child Will Eat Neither Mush, Mucilage, Porridge, Pablum, Gruel, nor Loblolly. Is Pickiness God’s Way of Culling the Herd?
On Feeding Children
5. A Study of Technique Regarding Spanking, Birching, Caning, and Whipping
A Complete Guide to Disciplining Your Child
6. How Do I Raise a Menstruating Daughter Without Causing Brain Damage, Nerve Failure, or General Impudence?
And Other Thoughts on Education
7. My Young Son Refuses to Engage in Fisticuffs or Play Games with Greased Livestock. Is It Too Late to Prevent His Inevitable Homosexuality?
On Turning Boys into Men
8. How May I Distinguish Healthful Amusements My Child Might Engage in from Those That Are Satan Disguised in the Raiment of Light and Joy?
On Appropriate Recreations for Children
9. How Many Leeches Should Be Applied to a Broken Bone and What Weapons Serve Me Best in the Valiant Struggle Against Rectal Worms?
On Maintaining General Health
10. The Successful Mother: Are You She?
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Therese Oneill
Bibliography
To the Two Mothers to Whom I Owe Everyone I Love
Sandra Balmer Nagel 1943–2011
Gloria Schilling Smith 1924–2017
They were magnificent, and they never would have done any of the things in this book.
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Author’s Note
The Stuff of Nightmares
This book is full of true information about child-rearing in the nineteenth century. I describe real attitudes, real practices, real children. I have culled from that era what is strange, incredible, and darkly funny, particularly as it related to the upper class of both America and Britain.
This is handpicked history, not comprehensive.
The nineteenth century was, for many children, the most horrible time in history to be alive. Cities formed quick and dirty, and they were lawless, full of uncontrolled disease, crowding, exploitation, and abuse. People suffered tremendously as they tried to find their footing in a brutal new world. Children suffered worst of all.
There are many books that can educate you about that suffering. This isn’t one of them.
I will address but not dwell on the misery of this era: the fact that during some periods of the nineteenth century the child mortality rate was at 50 percent, or that child labor laws didn't exist, or that there was no such thing as “child abuse” until late in the century, when the ASPCA decided to incorporate children into their protection along with dogs and horses. I wrote Ungovernable to entertain and inform; I didn’t write it to slug you in the stomach.
It is my dearest hope that the historically accurate pieces of child-rearing advice, lore, and anecdotes I relate here will leave you stupefied and shocked. I hope the style I have set it in will be a thrill of an introduction and will allow you to pursue the topics deeper (and darker) if you desire. Thank you.
—Therese Oneill
“We need to talk.”
Welcome, Unfit Mother
So. Here is where your life choices have deposited you. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Your bloodshot eyes and slouchy slept-in clothing. Your once-taut belly lapping over the yoga pants that will never come any closer to a yoga studio than the 7-Eleven it shares a parking lot with.
But here’s some good news! You’ve finally found a way to make the baby sleep: you just have to keep one hand on her tummy while using your other hand to keep the wind-up baby swing swaying at precisely three-fourths time, and run the vacuum and dishwasher simultaneously, while making sure the spit-up-encrusted blanket she won’t let you wash is tucked snugly around her left shoulder but never touching the right.
Now you are enjoying the first stillness of your day. You’ve made a little nest out of the least offensive dirty laundry that was clean yesterday before your older child overturned the basket from the sofa and used it to cage your middle child, who, defying six months of potty training, chose tactical targeted urination as an effective defense.
You went to rewash the towels but then both boys started throwing up, so the laundry that was merely peed upon had to take a back seat to that which had been puked on. The layer of plastic toys (the cheap, mass-produced cartoon abominations you swore you’d never buy) jab you through your makeshift bed, but the blessed side of total exhaustion is that you hardly feel them. Plus, ever since the last baby compensated for her slippery-quick birth by doing unspeakable things to your pelvic floor with her exit, you’ve accepted that pain is just part of life now. Let’s lie back onto the intricately finger-painted yogurt stains that cover your couch, and reflect.
You wanted a baby. You wanted to love another human and shape them into a gift to give the world. Now, in your darkest hours, you fantasize about yourself before children, smugly popping each blue birth control pill out of its foil into your toilet. Had you access to a time machine, you believe you’d use it to push into that bathroom, rip the towel rack off the wall, and knock your idiot self into the tub. Then you’d fish every last pill out of the bowl. It doesn’t matter if they’ve dissolved… back then you kept the toilet clean! The powder will dry and you can mix it with the expensive yogurt you used to buy, in the Before Time.
And here you are. Huddled in garbage, chained like a low-rent Princess Leia to a pumpkin-sized Jabba the Hut, fantasizing about time machines and toilet p
ills. Aw, honey. It’s okay. This is a confusing time in your life.
You’re a twenty-first-century parent living in a world where the rules of proper parenting change by the hour. And you’re starting to think… they’re stupid rules. Stupid and useless, and they’ve crushed your faith in any writer with letters after her name. Still, you’re desperate. You keep hoping to grab ahold of a book with the right set of rules.
Judging by the way your chipped manicure scrabbled over the spines in the childcare section of the bookstore before settling on this peculiar book, you’ve still not found the magic words that will transform your sloppy, non-subservient progeny into something you can show off in public. In fact, you’re beginning to despair that you ever will. That you have done, and are continuing to do, everything wrong.
“This Is What I Call a Monster!” by E. A. Oneill, age ten, 2017.
Oh, you poor woman. Pause. Breathe. And accept the truth.
You are doing everything wrong. You’re a mess and your parenting is woefully lacking in nearly every regard.
I’m not telling you this to be harsh. Truly, I’m here to help, but we can’t begin the healing process until you face the mess you’ve gotten yourself into. The proof is all around you. And not just in the abhorrent behavior of your children.
Look at what a fibber you’ve become! You know “screen time” is bad… so you find yourself saying ridiculous things like, “My children watch two hours a week and they only like 1970s-era Dr. Who episodes that we get on VHS from the library! Or for a special treat they can watch YouTube videos of DR Ramasjang. It’s Danish children’s programming notable for its open acceptance of cross-dressing puppets.” But that’s not counting the days when you’re tired, busy, or out of wine. Which is every day now. Then you strap them down in front of whatever screen in the house blinks brightest and loudest.
Or the lengths you’ve gone to conceal that your child only eats four foods. And they’re all brown, except for that purple cereal you buy direct from Amazon so no one will see your shame. And you never thought to feel bad about the half swat on the rear you gave your son when you found him atop the family Pekingese, squeezing the contents of an entire honey bear over her $120-per-groomer-visit coat, but now you press your hands to your guilty brow, wondering if you’re a child-beater. (You’re not, by the way. However, butt-swatting is an ineffective punishment. Unless you’re using properly aged and cured hickory switches.)
Then you compound your misery by seeking the most modern, educated advice you can find. Modernity has nothing to do with children, Mater. Children are ancient and unchanged in their pure form. You won’t be helped by books that detail the importance of neutral color tones and non-judgmental chair design in your child’s time-out space, or books that tell you never to call your daughter pretty but to encourage her when she elbows the old lady blocking her access to the frozen vegan pizzas at the grocery store, because she is showing leadership skills.
And where is the book that can explain how you’re supposed to feel about the selection of satin demi-cup padded training bras next to the Dora the Explorer underpants? That feeling of disgust quickly shoved down by shame was so confusing, wasn’t it? After all, you’re supposed to… encourage a young woman’s body acceptance and allow her to feel comfortable in her budding sexuality… right? But does that mean your eleven-year-old gets fancier bras than you? Does that seem fair to you?
Has it ever, in history, been so acceptable for a parent to be whipped by her child, instead of the other way around? Are you really surprised these methods aren’t working?
Allow me to reframe.
Once upon a time, parents were not enslaved to the whims of ultraconfident toddlers. Once upon a time, you told a child to pick up his plate after he’d eaten everything you’d placed on it, and to put it in the sink. You told him one time. One. You did not count to three. You did not lob half-hearted threats regarding loss of iPad privileges. You simply told him to act and he did, respectfully. Dickens’s Tiny Tim would have wept with gratitude over your heart-smart lentil loaf, not whined and gagged throughout the meal.
Once upon a time, if your daughter was taking too long gazing at her reflection in the mirror, you’d ask her to quote three verses from the Bible on vanity. And she would, from memory, effortlessly but with proper humility, and then quietly set aside her hairbrush and ribbons, ready to do whatever task you’d prepared her for. Did Beth March simper and flounce when she was unable to attend the ball her older sisters were taken to? No! She died with quiet dignity!
Once upon a time your fourteen-year-old son would hold a broken vase in front of you and look truly shamefaced. And when you said, “Clean this up, and we’ll talk about this when Father gets home. Now go help the men in the barn,” he would exit the room in stricken silence. Would the boy smartly suggest a better place for you to keep your vase so as to avoid poor fellows accidentally bumping into it? Would he scream that you don’t understand him and never take his side? Would he say, “You’re a total WAD, Mother!” and slam the door on his way out to the bicycle you bought for him to pedal himself to the arms of some purple-lipstick-wearing eighth-grade harlot? No. Even Huckleberry Finn, with all his adolescent mischief, took his drunken father’s constant beatings in easy stride. Young boys had resilience back then. Set them atop a raft made of garbage and send them down the Mississippi River—yes, they might encounter some floating corpses and a handful of attempts on their lives, but they didn’t fuss about it. They were too busy building character.
“The happy mother. Not you.”
There was once a time when parents were gods, and children their humbled flagellants! Good times! And, my friend, we can bring those days back.
Imagine that you had the chance to consult with the sage experts whose advice (probably) shaped the maternal minds that produced Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, and Lord Baden-Powell. (He founded Scouting for children. Without him there would be no Eagle Scouts. Eleven of the twelve men to walk on the moon were Eagle Scouts. Thus, without Lord Baden-Powell, America would not own the moon. No, we do. Law of Finders, Keepers.)
Would you do it? Or would you stick to more modern childcare books, with their unrealistically upbeat insistence that a child is a person, one deserving respect and consideration? Or, worse, the books written that helped create your insufferable generation? (Perhaps you should ask your husb—excuse me, co-parent partner to set down the game controller he’s currently using to massacre aliens while arguing via headset with a twelve-year-old in New Zealand about who “boinked” whose mom first to weigh in on the matter?)
A child is like a large insentient rock. Just a large, heavy burden with no obvious use. A parent is a stonemason. This child could be so hauled, smashed, and chipped away at that he is fit to form the supports of Halls of Governments, Grand Cathedrals, or An Especially Nice Applebee’s in the Good Part of Town. Or, if you continue on your course of twenty-first-century child-rearing, he could become that misshapen boulder that hangs over the railway bridge on River Road, the one where all the seniors at the high school paint penises in their class colors.
In this book I have anticipated your questions and compiled all the very best parenting advice from nineteenth-century experts. Here you will learn about discipline, morals, and the devastating repercussions of allowing a child to eat fruit. Set yourself free from the agonizing politics and pressures of twenty-first-century parenting. They aren’t working anyway. It’s time to take children back to the old school.
1
How Do I Prepare My Sacred Vestibule to Best Receive My Husband’s Life-Germ?
The Ins and Outs of Fruitful Conception
Try to assume as close to a left-bend forty-five-degree angle as possible to shorten the male-gender ovum’s journey through the fallopian tubes.
Q: Do you have any advice if I’m still on the fence about having children?
A: Yes. Every moment you remain childless is another beat of your heart e
choing down a meaningless eternity. Your time on earth will have been a blip, a glitch, and no trace of you will escape the blankness of death, and when you are gone only the poor estate agent who has to try to rid your home of your stench will mourn your passing.
Q: Oh. Well. That’s a pretty tight argument. Except I have child-free friends who are doing just fine.
A: Child-less is the proper Victorian term. Actually, “barren” is more accurate. “The Lord hath turned His mercy against you” is also appropriate. Your childless friends seem happy, with their disposable income and spare time. But how they weep at night. Weep in their clean houses after eating expensive adult food and wine and watching rated-R movies on the big screen in the living room. Bitterly weep.
But this is moot! You already know, in your heart, that children are your highest purpose as a woman! Otherwise you’d never have picked up this book. Let’s get started! Your work as a good mother begins long before the birth of your precious children. It begins even before conception! Preparation for motherhood as the Victorians did begins the moment you awkwardly allow your new husband to bunch your thirteen pounds of nightdress around your waist and accidentally elbow you in the chin while blindly but earnestly trying to navigate the cartography of your lady parts. If things get weird, just remember, you’re doing this for the baby!
Q: Wait—do I have to wear the nightdress? Weird how? What sorts of things am I supposed to do to prepare?
A: Slow down there, feisty filly. I don’t mean to mislead you. While it is the highest and most noble desire to start a family, it’s not a privilege to be allotted to all women. First, you must ask yourself, “Is it a good idea to put more of me in the world? Would my offspring bring good to society, or would I just be mushing up all my own deficiencies, from my foul temper to my freckles, into a squalling eight-pound plague to unleash on civilization?” Now is not a time to mince words, so I must say with great solemnity: We don’t more need more stupid and ugly in this world. If inferior goods are all that’s on offer up your baby aisle, best to just convert it into a dry goods department.
Ungovernable Page 1