Ungovernable

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

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 pills. 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.

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.

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.