ABSTRACT
At four people are dealing with a child whose ability to talk and to respond to talk is enjoying its first flowering. In teaching politeness and good manners mothers are not merely trying to ensure that their children learn to observe certain arbitrary conventions of social behaviour: they are equally concerned to lay down general ethical principles about how people behave towards one another, which will later form the basis of some consistent moral philosophy; and the middle-class mother continually makes this explicit in verbal terms, not simply relying on the child to generalize from event to principle, but interpreting her attitude for him in terms of social laws. This chapter discusses the principle of arbitration, which involves the mother's presence and active attention. It may be expected that parents who both verbalize themselves and value verbal response will be the most successful in imparting their ideas to the child.
