Although harsh treatment and inadequate care of children has a long history, widespread recognition of child maltreatment as a social problem, and particularly recognition of the lasting psychological consequences of maltreatment, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Parenting practices that today are recognized as abusive actually were accepted as standard practice and, in fact, were recommended by childrearing “experts” as recently as the late 1930s. Historians of childrearing trends (e.g., DeMause, 1974; Newson and Newson, 1974) describe open advocacy of child beating into the eighteenth century and continued recommendation of harsh, swift discipline well into this century. Not only was physical punishment advocated, but parents were counseled to behave in ways that today would be considered neglectful of the child's basic psychological and physical needs. For example, in 1928 Watson warned mothers against “mawkish, sentimental” handling of their babies. If a baby cried she or he should not be picked up; crying did not hurt the baby, but only hurt the parent to listen. An infant was expected to be quiet, obedient, and to submit early on to firm parental control (Newson and Newson, 1974).