In Steppen’s time, children learned to poop from watching their parents, or others. There were no doors, and children follow their parents everywhere. There was certainly nothing unnatural about it.
I imagine some people started adopting “privacy”, as an attitude, about the same time the first door was invented. I don’t know if the first doors were at the front of the “house”, on the bedroom, or on the “privy”, but with doors, children had to learn the “basics” of life through instruction, rather than imitation.
Now, when it comes to the basics of pooping, nothing could be easier, or more natural than squatting (see the Proper Way to Poop 1-3). In fact, squatting is what children do, even when they haven’t been “trained”. Squatting is what the body does when you are in the wild.
So at some point in time, for most of our ancestors it was less than a thousand years ago, doors, and outhouses entered the social arena. Whereas adults kind of like getting their “bums” a little farther from the ground, and the privacy, children look at it a little differently.
Even I, to this day, can recall the childhood fears of falling into the hole. The hole was made for adults, it was big. Growing up in Florida, I remember all kinds of stories regarding snakes and baby alligators living in the sewer systems, and coming out through the toilet bowls. But the worst, was the feeling of your little legs just dangling, and your hands on each side of the bowl as you tried to get into some kind of position where you could get pressure on your gut to “push” out the poop.
Not that I was traumatized in any lasting way.
However, there must be something unnatural about it, because the books and the training videos are endless. And, since I rarely hear news stories of children falling in, I’m pretty sure that all of us “get it” at a fairly early age.
It’s a good thing we do, because in this country you have no choice but to sit up high on a porcelain “throne” when the time comes for “number 2”. There are no alternatives.
Here’s something to ponder:
Sigmund Freud believed that the various stresses of childhood had huge effects on our psyche and the formation of our compulsions as adults. His analysis of the Anal Phase of our childhood (ages 1-3) years had much to say about the conflicts of potty training and the lingering issues that arise from the restrictions that are placed on when, and where, it can occur.
His belief was that the child, fighting these restrictions, learns that he can exercise a little control in the conflict by NOT pooping when asked. Freud goes on to say that the pleasure that the child gains from this “withholding” can lead to an “Anal Retentive” personality (for which our current term is just plain old “anal” – now you know where the term came from!). This personality trait generally expresses itself as stubbornness, being tight-fisted with cash and possessions, and it can affect future relationships with “authority”.
To me, it seems that most of the conflict comes from the child learning how to utilize the western toilet. The child already knows how to squat and poop, that is what they do best – and, it would seem that there is not much conflict on telling a child WHERE to do it (they learn placement issues all the time – where to eat, where to put toys,…). So, the real conflict must be in trying to teach the child to sit up on a cold, hard, porcelain seat – where his legs dangle far from the floor – and poop from a position that is un-natural, and actually detrimental the evolutionary flow of events. One might conjecture that there lies evidence of many of the conflicts of our western culture, and the “anal” outcome.
Some great little follow-up articles:
In areas still out of the reach of US contractors, the child only needs to learn WHERE is proper. When he squats to poop, there is no “withholding”, and there is no awkward postural adaption required.
Here is an interesting piece from the web – it’s not directly related, but it is related:
Paleo-opolis 