forbade... You look at the games that were played - "British Bulldog" and many others where picking each other up and holding them off the floor for a few seconds was the aim. Such games are forbidden now... Forbidden by social workers, and our norms have changed. Look at the guiding terminology used by ordinary people a century ago. It wasn't "sexual abuse" or "paedophilia", it was "interfering" (invasive sexual touching), or "molesting" (troubling the spirit of a child). All that changed, particularly in the mid-1980s when social workers, afraid of being handbagged by Maggie's cuts, drummed up a huge scare about paedophile bogeymen in order to keep themselves securely employed... So I would posit that what was guiding behaviour within families *prior* to social worker interference was not obedience, not morality, but basically a blessing where parents involved the children closely in their lives, they functioned as a family team, and children had an implicit blessing where they were wanted to grow up healthy and strong... Such families also displayed self-reliance, independence from the external heirarchy, and loyalty towards each other. Having been myself brought up in care of the Church of England Children's Society where all sexuality, all making friendships at all were actively suppressed by the houseparents of the children's home, I can say that the effect was sexual inhibition and social avoidance in adult life where I nowadays live as a hermit - largely unable to form relationships. The children's homes were closed down precisely to