ABSTRACT
In the light of these considerations, how do mothers behave in practice? Our impression was that, although in general they were aware that it was useless to hope for too much too soon, they were nonetheless influenced by the subtle prestige attached to early and successful toilet training. This led to a curious
process of double-think whereby a great many mothers, while paying lip-service to the official attitude that, for most babies, twelve months was too young to expect control, themselves gambled fairly heavily in time and patience on the chance that their own babies were different. From one point of view, they had little to lose by starting training early: if they were in fact quickly successful, they would be able to claim credit both for having a precocious child and for being patently efficient in this difficult sphere of child management; if they failed, they could fall back on the professionally authorized belief that 'all children are differenf, and that early success with any particular child is largely a matter ofluck.
