Plath child rearing

Do you like Sylvia Plath? I like Sylvia Plath. I enjoyed Gwyneth Paltrow’s portrayal of her a great deal in Sylvia. After I saw that, I checked out some audio tapes of Sylvia Plath reading her own poetry from my library. I enjoyed those a lot, too. Then came The Collected Poems. Initially, I had a harder time trying to read her poetry myself, but I’m getting more into it now, I think. Then came The Bell Jar. I loved The Bell Jar. The edition I have has some biographical information in the back that piqued my interest beyond what the book alone had. So, to get yet more of Sylvia Plath into my brain I ordered Letters Home, which is a collection of Sylvia’s own letters to her family from 1950-1963 (over 600 letters! A true writer), compiled and annotated by her mother. I am reading that now. There was a particular part I just read the other night that was so confirming to my own heart’s conviction, I wanted to post it here.

This is what Aurelia Schober Plath wrote in 1975 in the introduction to Letters Home. Sylvia Plath, Aurelia’s first child, was born in 1932. Otto Plath was her husband and Sylvia’s father.

“Otto and I wanted to start our family as soon as possible, he hoping our first child would be a daughter. “Little girls are usually more affectionate,” he said. As soon as I was certain I was pregnant, I began reading books relating to the rearing of children. I was totally imbued with the desire to be a good wife and mother. At mealtimes we discussed the varying, and often conflicting, theories of child rearing. Had I been inclined to rigidity in the early training of my children, my husband, who believed in the natural unfolding of an infant’s development, would have strongly opposed me. He constantly voiced his recollections of his mother’s type of child care (he was the oldest of six children). I quietly followed the “demand feeding” accepted as modern today and labeled old-fashioned in the 1930’s, though I would never confess to it in front of my contemporaries, who conscientiously followed the typed instructions of their children’s pediatricians. Both my babies were rocked, cuddled, sung to, recited to and picked up when they cried.”

I think that’s lovely. And I have nothing to add. Yes, I do! But I’m not gonna.