Shortly after Little Albert’s experiment, Watson was forced out of his academic post when it became known he was having an affair with his assistant, Rosalind Rayner. He took work in advertising, where his understanding of psychology led to a highly successful career. At the time, he began writing books and articles on childcare, basing them on his interpretation of behaviorism. Watson believed that every behavior is learned through a process of interaction with the outside world, and child development is a matter of behaviors being shaped by conditioning. He also believed that no behavior is innate and inherited, instead learning through experience.
Parenting is therefore a matter of controlling the stimuli that your child associates with certain responses, which parents do by monitoring their surroundings. Watson, who believed that fundamental emotions such as fear, rage, and love were powerful motivators, advocated an objective, science-based approach to parenting, and also advocated emotional detachment. This idea found enthusiastic support among a generation of young parents; however, recent research has shown that this method does not work nearly as well as once thought and did more harm when practiced.
