Parenting, in the good old days

Gerard Vanderleun recounts a tale from a by-gone era, when children did not have all the resources of the state to defend them from the consequences of their own actions:

It was a terrible moment, a humiliating moment [. . .] But humiliation was to turn to terror.

It got worse because, after my mother had stood there to witness my degradation, she looked into my eyes and spoke the words any child hates most to hear in this world: "Well, we will have to have a very serious talk about this. We'll start right after your father gets home."

". . . Right after your father gets home." In that era any sane kid's first thought after hearing those words was to wonder if he still has time to kill himself before that moment rolled around. You see, in those distant days, the fathers were at work and the mothers were at home, and when the fathers came home from work they were likely to be just a wee bit cranky from "the job." Hence, their mood was always going to hover somewhere between mildly irritated and homicidal, depending on what had happened at the office and in the bar car after work.