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Hi Amanda,
Like Nicholas above, I was fascinated and impressed by this use of bed-wetting as a lens on subjectivity. And having just watched Asiya’s video and thinking of my own research, I was struck by the Pavlovian thread linking our various topics and approaches. I really think there is so much more to be said about the neglected Pavlovian framework in terms of correctional, psychiatric, behavioural and therapeutic approaches.
Hi Kate, Thank you so much for taking the time to watch it! I was really struck by this too and it definitely requires more attention in my own work. I thought your poster was really fantastic and I had some similar thoughts to you in the discussion about how it makes us as viewers feel. I think the discomfort I felt in watching it says a lot in of itself. It communicated the emotions of your research so well. Congratulations again!
Dear Amanda, thank you for your great poster. We need to organize an international session on the history of bedwetting! The Finnish inquiry into the failures of child welfare in 1937-1983 also shows how bedwetting was seen by children and caregivers and what kind of narrated memories it has produced. Moreover, I am curious to know if you have considered applying Koselleck’s concepts ‘Erfahrung’ and ‘Erlebnis’ as analytical tools in your analysis. Are they of any use for you?
Dear Pirjo,
Thank you very much for taking the time to watch my poster. An international session on the history of bedwetting sounds like a fantastic idea! I’m very interested to learn about experiences of bedwetting heard by the Finnish Inquiry. It is an issue mentioned by almost every respondent to the Scottish inquiry. I have to admit that I wasn’t aware of Koselleck’s concepts (perhaps in part because of my shameful language skills, or lack of) but I am very intrigued and have managed to find a pdf copy of Futures Past. This seems extremely useful and relevant to what I’m trying to do, so thank you so much for bringing it to my attention. I’m really looking forward to reading more!
Hi Amanda,
I really enjoyed watching your presentation – thank you. I found it particularly fascinating that even in the later twentieth century that children are still being punished for bed wetting – the little that I’ve read about the history of bed wetting suggests that it’s increasingly recognised as a medical issue by this point in time. I wondered whether anything you’ve come across in the material you’ve looked at suggests that care-givers recognised it so, but then still punished children in any case? Perhaps the sources don’t reveal this. I also wondered whether you’ve come across anything else that might reveal more about the notion of unconscious agency (as Heidi suggests above) or other expressions of trauma – are there any examples of nightmares for example?
There’s lots of parallels between our work despite the chronological difference – it’d be lovely to talk more. I’ll send you an email over the next few days!
Thanks for sharing your work!
Claudia
Hi Claudia,
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch it and for your question! It is a really interesting point. I remember one former resident, June, talking about being given medication for bedwetting – ‘an orange-tasting tablet’. June was also taken to a clinic for bed-wetting, this was in the 1960s and early 1970s. But alongside this she was still being beaten by caregivers for wetting the bed and covered in undiluted disinfectant, which was another punishment used in Roman Catholic homes in particular. June remembered that: ‘I felt victimised. I think she thought I was wetting the bed deliberately.’ June also remembered that not all children who wet the bed were treated in the same way. For instance, June was given painful cold baths but other children were given warm baths.
I find bedwetting to be the most visible example (to historians) of what you could call unconscious agency. I think that is simply because it was such a huge source of frustration to adults. There are definitely other non-verbal expressions of trauma, such as nightmares as you say. Many children were plagued by nightmares and caregivers did not always comfort them. Some children sought to comfort their siblings by taking them into their beds, as they would have slept at home. But this too was punished. The testimony of Dexter comes to mind about this, he remembered: ‘Nightmares, screaming and bed-wetting were all reasons for a beating or for being punished during the night.’
I also really enjoyed your poster and would love to talk more! My email is a.gavin.1@research.gla.ac.uk. Thank you again for taking the time to respond.
Dear Amanda,
Thank you for this fascinating introduction to your research. I like the idea of accessing children’s’ experiences – their voices – through their actions (agency?). I am fascinated by the measures taken by institutions, or figures of authority, to change the behaviour of individuals – for instance, the punishments you mention in your poster. What were logics behind these measures? Moreover, do you see other types of disciplinary measures taken against other types of “wrong” behaviour?
Thank you!
– Emilie
Dear Emilie,
Thank you so much for your question and your kind words! On the logic behind the punishments – I think with bedwetting the key thing was viewing it as a behavioural issue that could be corrected through consistent punishments, often using humiliation and shaming tactics in an attempt to do this. Arguably it became a vicious cycle where children were unable to control the issue which was worsened by the violence they endured as a result. These types of punishment were woven into the daily routine in some institutions – each morning beds were inspected and children were then punished if they had wet sheets. They would frequently be made to stand outside with the wet sheets over their heads and there are several reports of children being forced to wear their underwear on their heads.
I think the same logic underpins the bedwetting alarms which were intended to condition children’s behaviour. Deborah Blythe Doroshow wrote a great article on this – ‘An Alarming Solution: Bedwetting, Medicine, and Behavioural Conditioning in Mid-Twentieth-Century America’, ISIS 101:2 (2010).
To answer your question on measures against other ‘wrong’ behaviour – definitely. These regimes (large, religious-run children’s homes) were generally very punitive. They were intended to reform children as much as care for them. Bedwetting perhaps caused the most frustration to adults because of the labour associated with it, but children were routinely punished for what you might think of as ‘normal’ behaviours such as laughing or talking with friends. In theory, the institutions were meant to keep punishment logs but I’ve not been able to access any examples of these yet.
I noticed a lot of parallels with Jen Rinaldi and Kate Rossiter’s work on Huronia discussed in the Lived Welfare State session. I know it is not really a ‘behaviour’ as such but children’s bodies were policed and punished if they were seen to be ‘dirty’ or ‘wrong’. For instance, Jim remembered his experience of washing in a children’s home: ‘She was inspecting you to make sure you were clean. She carried a big long twig, a branch. If she thought your feet were dirty, she would use this twig across your back, or your buttocks or your legs. And that left big long welts on you. It really did. It happened to us all.’
Thank you again for your really interesting questions!
Thank you for sharing your work on bedwetting as an entry point into children’s experiences. Thanks also for sharing your thoughts on reformulating the concept of agency, as opposed to throwing out the concept entirely. It is very interesting that you define agency as the ability to influence one’s life within parameters. I like how you try to find the meaning of bedwetting for this particular time. You seem to say that bedwetting was scientifically thought to be an unconscious sign of anxiety, but caregivers punished children nonetheless for it. You say that these punishments, including alarms, created shame for the children. Can you speak a little more about how you accessed the children’s sense of embarrassment in this historical moment? Also, you seem to say that bedwetting shaped caregiving practices, so it was a way of children influencing the world around them. Would you then call this a form of “unconscious agency”? Thanks. Heidi
Dear Heidi,
Thank you for taking the time to watch my presentation, and for your questions. On the understanding of bedwetting as caused by anxiety – almost all of those providing care in the institutional care settings I look at had little to no formal training until at least the 1960s, so although there was an understanding of the emotional or psychological causes of bedwetting by psychologists and child guidance practitioners, this did not always ‘trickle down’ to caregivers. It was generally seen as a behavioural problem caused by a lack of discipline and associated with urban poverty. Many people complained about the issue as a ‘dirty habit’ when looking after children who had been evacuated from Scottish cities such as Glasgow.
On accessing children’s sense of shame and embarrassment – I have found this really difficult to do in archival sources. I wasn’t able to talk much about this in the poster but my research draws a lot on the testimony heard before the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. The feelings of shame and embarrassment surrounding bedwetting are recalled by many former residents. Many remembered being shamed by caregivers as a response to bedwetting, such as name-calling (‘dirty’ and ‘smelly’) and forcing other children to join in. Shame was described by one person as being a ‘weapon’ used by caregivers. Many testify to the great lengths they went to hide their wet sheets, sleeping in them despite physical discomfort or trying to wash them in the sink secretly. And others would avoid or refuse to drink after a certain time. The bedwetting alarm was also embarrassing for some children. This is alluded to in the Quarrier’s bedwetting study I referenced where the physicians complained that some children tried to ‘sabotage our efforts.’
One witness, Frank, told the Inquiry that ‘I always wet my bed…I was embarrassed in case the other boys saw that I had wet my bed. In the morning, they would ring a bell and the boys would pull back the sheets so that the nuns could inspect the beds. I left my sheets up.’
I think that ‘unconscious agency’ is a very fitting way to describe what I was trying to say, so thank you! And thank you again for your questions.
Thank you for your detailed response which I find quite enriching. This is such a great topic and you are really asking so many great questions. You are an ethical historian trying to give voice to the ultimate voiceless people in history — shamed, institutionalized, bed wetting children. You care about the little children hiding their sheets and sleeping in their own urine — far from the “great men” of history that normally get our attention.
This is an incredibly kind thing to say, thank you so much.
Dear Amanda Gavin –
Thank you so much for sharing this fascinating consideration of agency in your research! I was really struck by how you use the unlikely subject of historical bedwetting as a way to productively read archives ‘against the grain,’ and I found your framing of ‘childhood’ as something that fundamentally complicates our understanding of intentionality/agency to be absolutely convincing.
Please forgive me if this question betrays my lack of familiarity with historiographies of childhood (something which I’m looking forward to learning much more about through our HEX conference) – but I wanted to ask if you could spare a few words on how cultural/intellectual history comes into your work. That is – is there a literature on the discursive construction of ‘the child’/‘childhood’ at this moment in Scottish history? How might have state practices/adolescent responses both been shaped by and themselves worked to shape this landscape of ideas? (I am curious, in particular, if there were certain historical notions of human ‘development’ being mobilized at this moment.) Did this historical conjuncture feature competing understandings on ‘the child’ as a type of agent?
Thank you!
– Nick
Dear Nick,
Thank you for watching my presentation and for your thought provoking questions. It is a very good question on cultural/intellectual history. I cannot think of work on the construction of childhood in the Scottish context specifically, but I would be pleased if someone wanted to correct me! There is some excellent work on the history of childhood more broadly, that thinks about how the idea of ‘childhood’ and the ‘child’ has been constructed through time and place. A really good book and starting point on this history is Hugh Cunningham’s Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. In my own work, it is not a question I have really engaged with because I’ve tried to focus on children’s perspectives as much as my sources will allow. What I would say though is that using adult’s memories of their childhood as my main source material means that conceptions of childhood and what it means to be a child often shape people’s narratives significantly. But this is more about current conceptions of childhood than those in the past.
Your second question is compelling and I have to admit I’m not sure how to answer it! I hope I have understood it correctly. There was certainly a lot of work being done on children’s development, particularly influential was John Bowlby’s attachment theory emerging after the Second World War. But one of the arguments in my thesis is that these ideas did not translate into childcare practice in institutional care settings. Most of the institutions I look at were established in the 19th Century, very large and run by religious voluntary organisations and were quite culturally isolated. I’ve found that practices in these institutions did not change in line with changes in attitudes and new ideas about child development.
Lastly, I think that the discourses on what a ‘child’ was meant to be (such as innocent) was not reflected in the structure and practices of child ‘care’ which cannot be separated from punishment and discipline during this period. In one sense, children were viewed as malleable (powerless?), but on the other hand, they were seen as a potential moral threat (powerful?). Thank you again for such interesting questions, it has given me a lot to think about!
Fascinating subject and material, Amanda. Thank you for sharing your project here.
Asiya Bulatova
10.3.2021 18:06
Hi Asiya, thank you so much for taking the time to watch it. That is very kind! As Kate said below, I find the Pavlovian theme common to our work really fascinating. I have to admit I have rather brushed over it! But you and Kate have inspired me to interrogate it a bit more. Thank you!
Amanda Gavin
12.3.2021 11:26