Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
Jean Illsley Clarke is an interesting figure in the last quarter of the 20th century/beginning of the 21st century parenting advice. She consistently opposed spanking. Her framework is Transactional Analysis, which is Psychoanalysis not accepted by the founding associations of Psychoanalysis. Some figures active in Transactional Analysis have gotten into trouble with licensing agencies and the law for patients (including children) who died as a result of treatment (notably rebirthing/reparenting/cathexis/attachment therapy, etc.). Clarke uses material produced by these figures, notably Jacqui Schiff's Discounting and a substantial amount of Foster Cline's work.
Psychoanalysis historically ignored relationships, and early childhood experiences, preferring the fantasy world of the child to the actual experience of the child (notable exceptions to both of these include Bowlby, Ronald Fairbairn, and others). Clarke did not, which enabled her to focus on the way that problems leftover from the parent's upbringing make it difficult for them to be good parents. Unfortunately, her work suffers from unscientific ideas about how those leftovers manifest, and how they can, therefore, best be treated.
Clarke has failed to bring her developmental milestones up to date. She continues to use an old set with her own idiosyncratic additions, which include a wide variety of dangerous ideas about infant care. Specifically, a chart reproduced in more than one of her books labels feeding infants based on early hunger cues as "overindulgence".
Clarke's ideas of motivation are modified behaviorist: she doesn't like punishment, but seems to think ignoring/not reacting/withdrawal of whatever (or whoever), is not punishment and is a useful motivator. Of course, this is a short-term effective strategy, but it is still punishment, and it's a particularly damaging one in terms of attachment. It can also lead to abuse if escalated (this is not theoretical; this is part of what got Schiff, Cline and others into trouble). She does like praise (who doesn't in popular parenting work?) and appears to have no awareness of the research showing the problems associated with using it to motivate children (or adults!).
Clarke's set of ideas combine in bizarre ways. Because she believes in catching children doing good things and rewarding them, and ignoring them when they do undesirable things, she urges parents to ignore children who are clinging to knees asking to be picked up. She urges them instead to pick up a baby when playing quietly, to reward them for this good behavior. Yet she specifically says that parents should not initiate play with a baby this age. It's difficult to imagine a set of constraints on parenting that would interfere with parental responsiveness more effectively. (Okay, never do what the baby wants/do whatever the baby doesn't want, would be a simpler way to get similar effects.)
Clarke, like many Transactional Analysts, is very verbal. Her parenting ideas therefore are not useful at all for not-very-verbal children, and a lot of her techniques are designed to encourage children to only communicate verbally (say in words what they are feeling, rather than encouraging parents and children to non-verbally communicate their emotions). This will have the effect of distancing people from their emotions, and make the process of becoming aware of and communicating one's emotions much more fragile and uncertain.
Clarke's verbal orientation is exacerbated by her love of taxonomies. She has a Nurture Continuum, a Structure Continuum, several levels of Discounting (courtesy Jacqui Schiff, which ought to make anyone suspicious), a Nurture/Structure Highway, Strokes (Banking, Stroke Quotient Decision Theory -- which required multiple reading to realize just what she was proposing. I, personally, was shocked. There is no way infants engage in that kind of cognition. That's homeostasis if it's anything at all.), Ages and Stages developmental framework, a Rule of Four. She just loves to devise structured lists and then put the reader through a bunch of quizzes to make sure they've internalized this Knowledge. It is unhelpfully complex, and further distracts from attachment, and feeling one's feelings and being able to take the perspective of one's child (spouse, younger self, etc.).
Clarke is consistently anti-democratic. She accepts the family hierarchy unquestioningly, and insists that others do as well. She does not engage in any amount of checking with the person to be helped whether they want the help, what kind of help they want, and what they would consider an improved situation. She labels empathic and perspective taking responses incorrect, negative, disempowering, discounting and so forth. In general, her idea of how people should help each other is to tell them what to do. Parents should tell their children what to do (or what not to do). Friends should tell friends what to do. Spouses should tell spouses what to do. It's presented as helpful advice, but it is, basically, at minimum, rude, and often ineffective if not mean-spirited.
Clarke presents three basic human needs: stimulation, recognition and certainty. I'm not sure where hunger, sleep, safety, respect, love, attachment to special people, shelter, thirst and so forth fit in. I don't think she ever really even tries.
For all of Clarke's problems, she is remarkable in what she does get right. Parents really do need to understand what kind of baggage they are carting around, and find a way to get at least a little better, or they will have great difficulty being a good parent to their children. Punishment is not effective. Toddlers need to explore, and a wise parent figures out a way to modify the environment to support that need while protecting Adult Stuff. If you make a deal with your kids and don't hold up your end of it, you will suffer consequences, whether you recognize them as such or not. If you do not include your children in the work of the household, they will not know things they need to know how to do as adults. If you give your children too many inappropriate things/experiences, it will hurt them. She uses the Swap (although not enough, not clearly enough, and in one book complicated by a choice). She understands that relationships need to have many more positive interactions than negative interactions to bring pleasure to the participants (her ratio is two-to-one; I think it should be five-to-one).
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created July 11, 2006 Updated July 11, 2006