Historically, it is very odd for business people – or indeed anyone with an executive role – to spend much of their day attending to the needs of their own children. People weren’t heartless, they just didn’t think that it was particularly good for children to spend a lot of time with their parents. There was a prevailing fear of ‘spoiling’ children by overt displays of affection. It wasn’t until the early 1950s, first in the United States, then gradually across the rest of the developed world, that this view started to change. A number of researchers in the area of child development, especially the psychoanalyst, John Bowlby, stressed the importance of continuous and close relationships with parents.
Bowlby demonstrated the value of a warm, reassuring parental figure for the good development of the child. Playing on the carpet, washing hair, bouncing balls, laughing over Pingu’s antics, were, for Bowlby, matters of psychological life or death for the child: “All the cuddling and playing, the intimacies of suckling by which a child learns the comfort of his mother’s body, the rituals of washing and dressing by which through her pride and tenderness towards his little limbs he learns the values of his own…” To read more from The School of Life, click here.