Haarer was imprisoned for a time after Germany’s defeat in 1945 and lost her license to practice medicine. Later titles included Mother, Tell Me about Adolf Hitler!, a fairy-tale-style book that propagated anti-Semitism and anti-Communism in language a child could understand, and another child-rearing manual, Our Little Children. Within a short time, he will demand this service as a right, leave you no peace until he is carried again, cradled, or stroked-and with that a tiny but implacable house tyrant is formed!”īefore publishing The German Mother and Her First Child, which ended up selling 1.2 million copies, Haarer had written articles about infant care. In The German Mother and Her First Child, Haarer wrote, “It is best if the child is in his own room, where he can be left alone.” If the child starts to cry, it is best to ignore him: “Whatever you do, do not pick the child up from his bed, carry him around, cradle him, stroke him, hold him on your lap, or even nurse him.” Otherwise, “the child will quickly understand that all he needs to do is cry in order to attract a sympathetic soul and become the object of caring. She recommended that children be isolated for 24 hours after the birth instead of using “insipid-distorted ‘children’s language,’” the mother should speak to her child only in “sensible German” and if the child cries, let him cry. “The child is to be fed, bathed, and dried off apart from that left completely alone,” she counseled. Haarer viewed children, especially babies, as nuisances whose wills needed to be broken. This stance is clearly illustrated in the pictures in her books: mothers hold their children so as to have as little contact as possible. In addition, the book was accorded nearly biblical status in nursery schools and child-care centers.Īlthough children need sensitive physical and emotional contact to build attachments and thrive, Haarer recommended that such care be kept to a minimum, even when carrying a child. As of April 1943, at least three million German women had gone through this program. The recommendations from her book, originally published in 1934, were incorporated into a Reich mothers training program designed to inculcate in all German women the proper rules of infant care. Haarer was a pulmonologist, who, despite having no pediatric training, was touted as a child-rearing expert by the Nazis (the National Socialists). Nevertheless, it is supported by studies of mother-child interactions in Germany, by other research into attachment and by therapists’ anecdotal reports. ![]() The evidence that Haarer’s teachings are still affecting people today is not definitive. “This has long been a question among analysts and attachment researchers but ignored by the general public,” says Klaus Grossmann, a leading researcher in mother-child attachment, now retired from the University of Regensburg. If an entire generation is brought up to avoid creating bonds with others, the experts ask, how can members of that generation avoid replicating that tendency in their own children and grandchildren? ![]() The Nazis wanted children who were tough, unemotional and unempathetic and who had weak attachments to others, and they understood that withholding affection would support that goal. Infants are hardwired to build an attachment with a primary care giver. ![]() One aspect was particularly pernicious: she urged mothers to ignore their babies’ emotional needs. When asked, Flens recalled seeing one of Haarer’s books on her parents’ bookshelf.įlens’s story, told to me by her therapist, illustrates an issue troubling a number of mental health experts in Germany: Haarer’s ideas may still be harming the emotional health of its citizens. Flens (a pseudonym) was born after World War II, but Haarer’s books were still popular during her postwar childhood, where many households had a copy of The German Mother and Her First Child-a book that continued to be published for decades (ultimately cleansed of the most objectionable Nazi language). After lengthy conversations, they realize something else: a contributing factor may well be the child-rearing teachings of Johanna Haarer, a physician whose books were written during the Nazi era and aimed at raising children to serve the Führer. She and the therapist soon realize that both Flens’s problems may be rooted in her frustration at being unable to allow others to get close to her. Renate Flens, a German woman in her 60s who suffers from depression, tells her psychotherapist that she wants to love her children but just can’t.
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