The Connection Between Discipline and Delight in Nanny McPhee
by Marc T. Newman, Ph.D.

Neil Postman, in The Disappearance of Childhood, notes that one of the symptoms of our decaying society is the way we treat children as little adults. He does not mean expecting children to behave responsibly; he means blurring the lines between adulthood and childhood until the protective barrier is erased and adults feel free to victimize kids. An example of this cultural tendency is when filmmakers decide to sexualize or vulgarize children in their movies. In the recent remake of Yours, Mine, and Ours, one of the eighteen children from a blended family leeringly suggests that a good way to get back at their parents for marrying is for two of the girls to engage in improper sexual behavior. I cringed.

Modern filmmakers are required to journey into the past to recapture truly childlike (as opposed to childish) behavior. And as Postman notes in another of his books, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future, if a culture is getting it wrong, the appropriate course of action is look back to where things went amiss, and try to make things right before proceeding forward Nanny McPhee director Kirk Jones commented that “people are still looking at traditional ways of raising their children.” Nanny McPhee, a screen adaptation of the Nurse Matilda stories, transports us to the past in hopes of recapturing that tradition and using it to improve our future if we, like the children Nanny McPhee governs, incorporate her lessons. The rest