Just a Spoonful of Sugar: Permissive Childrearing and Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (Part Two)

Last time, I shared the first part of my reading of Mary Poppins from my book in progress about children’s culture from 1948-1968. As I hoped, I have already gotten some great responses. 

Alex Halavais posted “Kid’s Carnival” on his blog, which is well worth reading.  He writes about “the inversion of power: kids being kids without the pesky interference of grown-ups” in children’s media, an important theme which he especially explores through the example of Pippy Longstockings. He concludes about the absent parents in children’s fictions, “we don’t know how to write good parents. It isn’t easy to do. “  

But one of the striking things about the period I am studying is that there was often an effort to depict good parents in part because these stories were aimed as much at adults as at children and because they written in response to an explosion of new advice literature for Baby Boom era parents that could not avoid the challenge of discussing what good parents did. John Watson gets picked on a lot because he was so stuffy about the relations of parents and children. But there wer many more books after the war addressing these questions and most of them sought to imagine new kinds of relations between adults and children, an issue which was understood in part through the lens of anti-fascism. I will trace in this book how attitudes emerged through the Child Study movement of the Poogressive Era that would become much more widespread by the 1950s and 1960s, popularized by Benjamin Spock, but actually shaped by the thinking and advocacy of many female writers of the period. Early on, I define this discourse, which I label with many qualifications, as permissive.

Permissiveness:

• uses empathetic reflection to “take stock” and attempt to understand children’s motivations and drivers 

• values children’s sensuality, curiosity, push for independence, passion, playfulness as part of how they process the world 

• seeks to protect the rights of children to find their own voices, to pursue just solutions, to engage democratically with others in their own community

• Offers opportunities for children to achieve catharsis by working through emotional conflicts via expressive means, such as drawing pictures, writing stories, acting them out using dolls or other household materials.

• Seeks to minimize conflict by decreasing the use of authoritative statements in favor of discussions and explanations 

• seeks indirect rather than direct means to shape children’s characters 

• Is known for what it permits and accommodates rather than what it disciplines, constraints, limits and thwarts 

• gives children security and freedom to work through their own problems, watches from distance, provides resources when needed 

• embraces play as a mode of learning and as a means of communication, especially between parents and children

There are some permissive era works -- Peanuts for example -- which depend on the absence of adults, but there are many more which explore, as Mary Poppins does, the reformed relations between parents and children. And as this definition suggests, permissiveness involves more than just a shift in the authority structure of the American family.

On Facebook, Patrick Herron notes: “Reminds me of Lakoff's description in "Don't Think of an Elephant" of “strict father morality” (conservative) and “nurturant parent morality” (progressive) political frames.” This is a good point and one could argue that these distinctive ideological formulations, both of which model the American public on the structure of the family, came from the debates I am mapping here. The backlash against permissiveness has been a hallmark of conservative thought, which stresses a more discipline-centered family and dismisses engagement with children’s emotional development as producing “sniwflakes.” Both the left and the right map their aspirations for the nation onto their ideas about family life, which is the reverse side of what Lakoff is discussing.

Thanks to both for provoking further reflection through thoughtful critical engagement with the work. I welcome further such comments, since it’s going to be a while before I can send out this work for peer review and since I am not yet getting invites to give public talks on this project.

Now, back to Mary Poppins…

Poppins’ approach is perhaps best summed up by the lyrics of “A Spoonful of Sugar,” which she sings as she is encouraging the Banks children to put away their toys. A disorderly nursery was one of Watson’s  pet peeves:

“Children with toys all over the floor do not have time at the end of the day to clear them all up carefully -- handle them gently and stack them away in order. You buy a toy box but the toys are dumped in by the armful and thrown about the room at random the next day until the child comes upon the one he wants.” (142)

. Watson encourages parents to take out only one toy at a time and replace it before offering another.

Mary Poppins, however, approaches the problem in her own distinctive way:

In ev'ry job that must be done

There is an element of fun

You find the fun and SNAP!

The job's a game

and ev'ry task you undertake

Becomes a piece of cake

A lark! A spree! It's very clear to see, that a...

Spoonful full of sugar helps the medicine go down

The medicine go down

The medicine go down

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

In a most delightful way 

Mary Poppins issues no commands but rather she offers an invitation. She redirects their attention, using pleasure (the sugar) to inspire them to embrace the desired task and by the end of the song, the children do not want to stop, even to go on an outing. She has, in true permissive fashion, made cleaning the room into a game rather than a chore. Sugar (Mintz, 1985) was indeed a magic substance in the post-war period, added to breakfast cereals to insure that children ate them, used as a reward for good behavior in the form of suckers or candy canes at the dentist or the barbers, and resulting ultimately in a generation which was highly susceptible to childhood onset diabetes and cavities. Later in the film, Mary Poppins will get the children to take their medicine by customizing its flavor to their individual tastes: strawberry for Michael, Lime Cordial for Jane, and Rum Punch for herself. 

Mary Poppins’ mastery over child psychology is also suggested by another number where she gets the children to go to sleep by suggesting the exact opposite:

Stay awake, don't rest your head

Don't lie down upon your bed

While the moon drifts in the skies

Stay awake, don't close your eyes

Though the world is fast asleep

Though your pillow's soft and deep

You're not sleepy as you seem

Stay awake, don't nod and dream

Here, again, she does not need to issue orders, she doesn’t turn bedtime into a struggle and she does not demand that they sleep on a schedule,  but simply waits patiently for what Dreikurs describes as “logical consequences” to unfold. As Jean Webb (2002) notes in regard to the novel, Mary Poppins, as an “educator,” refuses to answer children’s questions and rarely offers direct morals, letting children make discoveries on their own as a consequence of the remarkable experiences she offers them. She exposes the Banks children  to other worlds rich in laughter, imagination, and creativity, teaching them to listen to other voices (whether those of Chimney Sweeps and Bird Ladies or a neighboring dog). When she does deliver messages, they are messages that Mr. Banks might respect, but they are often presented by Julie Andrews  in a teasing fashion. 

The book has no real equivalent to the “Spoonful of Sugar” or “Stay Awake” scenes, one of the many ways that the story was reconceptualized for a 1964 audience. There is an interesting sequence in the book, though, where Michael does naughty things all day, more or less, without any conscious motivation: 

“Michael woke up one morning with a curious feeling inside him. He knew, the moment he opened his eyes, that something was wrong but he was not quite sure what it was…. Throughout the rest of the day nothing went right with him. The hot, heavy feeling inside him made him do the most awful things, and as soon as he’d done them, he felt extraordinarily pleased and glad and thought out some more at once.” (Travers, 1934, 81, 83). 

Mary Poppins seeks to redirect his behavIor through one of her outings -- in this case, a trip around the world where he encounters stereotypical representations of various races (no doubt the reason the scene is not in the film -- another example of where racist representations are excluded but alternative ones are not provided).  In the end, she needs to settle his bad feelings with a glass of milk and a few moments of her affectionate attention:

“She stood there without saying a word, watching the milk slowly disappear. He could smell the crackling, white apron and the faint flavor of toast that hung about her so deliciously...And he thought how warm he was and how happy he felt and how lucky he was to be alive.” (Travers, 102)

There is no suggestion that this “naughty” boy needs to be disciplined. Rather, whatever bad feelings within him must be displaced by the good feelings that can only be generated through loving care. And, even if these ideas will be more fully elaborated through the film’s musical numbers, this structure of feeling points towards the permissive paradigm as it will be more fully articulated by postwar writers like Dreikurs.

Disney’s Mary Poppins is, in the end, structured around the project of “saving Mr. Banks,” helping the father to develop a more constructive relationship with his children. No such plot exists in Travers’ original novel, where, as Webb (2002)  suggests, the focus is on helping the children, “Travers is implying that the demands and stresses of capitalism separate the middle-class Banks family from the enjoyment and wonder of childhood, despite their desires.” (116)  Mr. Banks, whose name defines him through his job, must make a similar discovery in the film when he brings his children with him to his workplace. Despite his efforts to teach them the virtues of capitalist empire building, Michael refuses to give over his tuppence as a deposit, wanting instead to make a compassionate gift to the Bird Woman outside the Cathedral. When the children’s disruptions result in a run on the bank, the father faces the threat of being fired by the institution he cherishes so much. By this point, he has also found his home in a state of anarchy, overrun by soot-covered Chimney Sweeps, and in the aftermath, he has a conversation with Bert about the importance of spending more time with his children. Again, using reverse psychology, Bert tells him:

 When your little tykes are crying, you haven’t time to dry their tears and see those grateful little faces smiling up at you…. You’ve got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone though childhood slips like sand through a sieve. And all too soon, they’ve up and grown, and then, they’ve flown and it’s too late for you to give. 

Dick Van Dyke plays Bert as an adult who has remained in touch with his inner child, who remains imaginative, playful, and jocular, who finds creative expression through his work, who understands the emotional life of children, and who still maintains the ability to speak to the adult world. In this scene, he becomes a translator between Mr. Banks and his children, helping him to take the “bitter pill” of adult life with “a spoonful of sugar.” Mr. Banks retains his dignity and maturity throughout the scene but at the bank, the father seems to internalize the other man’s anarchic spirit:  laughing, telling jokes, rejecting the dignity and decorum expected of him. The moment is rendered all the more ironic by the fact that Banks -- reverting to a boyish state -- confronts Van Dyke as  another character: the ancient bank president, who embodies the fossilization of the capitalist patriarchy.

Everyone is convinced that he might try to kill himself without the job that has defined his life, but instead, they discover he has been working in the basement, repairing the children’s kite, and he takes the children and their mother in tow to the local park, where everyone decides to fly a kite:

When you send it flying up there

All at once you're lighter than air

You can dance on the breeze

Over houses and trees

With your fist holding tight

To the string of your kite

Only then, when the children care more about their father than they do about their nanny, does Mary Poppins make her departure, flying off into the sunset, like the gunman at the end of a classic western film, having set things right within the Bank’s household. Julie Andrews play a remarkably similar plot function the following year in The Sound of Music, where as the nanny, Maria, she transforms the Van Trapp household, which was run with military precision and discipline, into one full of song and rich in emotion, as the father learns to play and in this case, perform with his children.

The persistence of such narratives suggests how deeply grounded these conflicting patterns of child-rearing were in the culture of the 1960s. It was as if the whole culture was rediscovering the pleasures of childhood play -- of turning bread and water into tea and cakes, as Bert describes it -- and the importance of fathers spending more time with their families.

Perhaps they were.