‘Can you make your child brighter?’ asked the
Observer Magazine of 13 September 1970, tapping into the anxieties of middle-class parents. Joy Scully charted the ‘often neglected first five years’ and described ‘some of the ways parents can help their children to realise their inborn potentialities’.
You can’t make your baby walk, however many lurching hours he spends in a baby-walker
Scully addressed the pressures parents put on babies to walk. ‘You can’t make it happen, however many lurching hours he spends in a baby-walker,’ she said, ‘and you can only impede it happening by subjecting the child to the most appalling constriction, like tying him down in a cot or to a table leg for weeks on end.’