Three-Week Parents

John Broadus Watson, famed psychologist, speaking before the first National Conference on Character Education in Schools held in Manhattan last week, cast a red hot coal into the family circle. Said he: "I am arguing for a complete rotation of mothers and a complete rotation of nurses. I don't know how long it takes for conditions of familiarity to grow up between children and father and mother. That point can be determined experimentally. I think it is not longer than two or three weeks, anyway. Therefore, I should never let a mother handle her child longer than three weeks, and I should never let a nurse stay longer than three weeks. . . . This question hasn't anything to do with companionate marriage or marriage at all. It has to do with the bringing up of youngsters and making them as independent of people and things as they ought to be." For ten years Psychologist Watson experimented with babies at Johns Hopkins and Columbia University, reaching, among other things, the conclusion that babies should never be kissed or cuddled. Since 1924 he has been vice president of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Manhattan.