1. You are best known for your work as a historian and theologian. What led you into the subject of child rearing and psychology?

Two oddnesses led me to the child. Of course, I was "led to the child" on non-literary grounds over seventy years ago, having been a child and having co-raised numerous children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. (Out of respect for the "the kids," I kept them out of the book.) So I had long enjoyed experiences that advanced my curiosity.

The first review of The Mystery of the Child found it odd that "now that Marty is well along into old age" he is writing about childhood. The scholar in me (quoting R. H. Tawney) says that I am an historian because I find the world so very odd, and I want to find out how it got that way. Written history is made mainly by adults, and that's very odd. The theologian in me wants to reflect on what it is about the child that helps account for the oddness of the world of older people. One more thing: my subject is not "child rearing and child psychology" but simply "the child."

2. Describe your experience working on "The Child in Religion, Law, and Society" project. How did it influence your work here?

For dozens of Sundays-into-Tuesdays during a three-year period I shuttled from Chicago to Atlanta, where I co-directed a project on "The Child in Religion, Law, and Society" at the remarkable Center for the Study of Law and Religion. We'd meet individually with some of the nineteen faculty who had a sabbatical to research, discuss, and write about some problem of the child. As I learned from the Emory professors, I was able to test a thesis that I had long ago formulated — that alongside the urgent need to deal with the problem(s) of the child it was also important to come from another angle and ponder "the mystery of the child." Those Emory University faculty seminar-participants knew much and were learning more about problems, and I tried to put that learning to work in this "other angle" pondering book. Countless conversations with my co-leaders, John Witte and Don S. Browning, were very helpful.

3. How do you feel your book stands apart from the very full field of child development guidebooks?

It stands apart because there is a radical difference in conceptions when one sees problems, which, at least in theory and often in practice, have solutions, while this one, distinctively if not uniquely, sees mysteries, which cannot be addressed as problems. In Gabriel Marcel's terms, a problem stands outside one's self and the problem-solver lays siege to it. The mystery involves us and, because of its transcendent edges and depths, largely and creatively eludes us.

4. What mistakes do you think the accepted experts too often make in dealing with children?

I don't have the credentials, ambition, or calling to isolate and attack the mistakes of the experts. The "mystery" approach, however, is posed over against two elements in many of their approaches. First, it is wary of reductionism, of reducing the child to this or that which shows up in her problems: the child is then nothing but an "autistic" or "delinquent" or "abused" child, or, worse, nothing but the product of "the selfish gene" or "the sum of neuron firings in the brain, or nothing but a victim of original sin. My approach is against "nothing buttery." Second, so many manuals and guides and curricula teach how to control the child and aggrandize or soothe the adult. Discipline is necessary in child rearing, but discipline based on control reduces the mystery of the child.

5. Is The Mystery of the Child primarily for scholars, or do you speak directly to caregivers? Who do you define as caregivers?

I'd like to think that scholars would find this to be a book that will prompt them to further their own research, but I very much also aim at the world of caregivers, and hope that the language in the book, while it makes some demands — why read a book, if one already knows everything that is in it? — is, if it matches the author's intention, clear and empathic. Everyone who deals with children — parents, relatives, teachers, psychologists, social workers, ministers, coaches — are called to give care.

6. You discuss "childlikeness" and "childness" as things adults should nurture in themselves. What is the core of this pursuit?

The novelist Georges Bernanos depicts a priest-character who says that probably the most terrifying words ever heard by human ears are in the Gospel record of Jesus: "Unless you change and become like a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of God." The assumption must be that adults can change. While manifesting "childlikeness" is fine, an obscure word in the dictionary, "childness," better reaches for what is commanded in the Gospel. "Childness" would mean embodying some of the aspects of what the child represents in the Gospels and in lively Christian theology. Cannot old people attain some measure of "trust," "responsiveness," "receptivity," "wonder," and more?

7. You advocate viewing the child in a sense of wonder, as "a mystery surrounded by mystery" rather than as a set of problems to be solved. How does this relate to the necessary punishments every caregiver needs to implement at some point?

Among the experts from whose works I benefited was an English psychologist, Margaret Donaldson, who faced the issue of the control needed to discipline. Of course, there must be discipline: only a fool would think a child enters the world with all the knowledge that has been accumulated, or enough virtue to be a creative social being. But, says Donaldson, whenever one must exert a measure of control (or discipline), this should be done in such a way that the next time less control or discipline is needed. Observe most controlling disciplinarians: they demonstrate or imply to the child that they are the boss and that there's more hard-lining or punishment ahead. Their approach is self-defeating as a policy and is defeating to the child, who loses the willingness to risk "wonder."

8. What do you see as the tension between nature and nurture, and how can that be resolved by your advocating the child as mystery?

I tried to avoid the "nature" versus "nurture" debate as much as I could, because it is predictable, old, tired, repetitious, and outworn. Then I found that however one disguises the terms, what they represent inevitably has to be faced. The "mystery" approach does not let "nature" determine everything, and as used in this book it does make a great deal of "nurture," which includes the spiritual environment. I cite a debate between a philosopher and a scientist, neither of them believers, in which the philosopher accuses the scientist of "philosopher envy." Why? Because the microbiologist implied that once one knows all about the chemistry of the brain and the gene, one can propose an ethic or worldview. No, the philosopher says, a person (or a society) has to risk projecting some ideals of the good life and proposing some steps to approach it. Of course, such a fulfillment is never attained. Absolutes will not get one very far, but one can create an environment ("nurture") in which ideas from theology, religion, ethics, philosophy, and history can be tried out.

9. You talk about "creative responses for the provision of care." What might some of these responses be in a practical setting?

The first response is to follow the command to "change," and that means to stimulate a sense of wonder which allows a caregiver to come closer to the imaginative world of the child. It means working with schools, churches, parent groups, the child's siblings, museums, art schools, and playgrounds, since these help ease burdens that come with inordinate physical and spiritual and social responsibilities.

10. How did the work of Catholic theologian Karl Rahner influence your work here?

Remarkably, few theologians talk about "the child," except on occasion in the context of education or discipline. Karl Rahner, in my mind the most notable Catholic theologian of the century past, devoted only a score of pages to systematic talk about the child, but what he said elsewhere opens the door on the subject of the child, and what he said there about the child illumines what he said about all ages and situations of life. An aged Rahner could speak of death as "the abyss of mystery," while his language about the child correlates with "the mystery of the child."

11. How would you address critics who argue that psychology, sociology, and other scientific disciplines need to provide a framework for any serious and proactive discussion of the child?

Of course, I welcome the contributions of social scientists to the study of the child, but they deal chiefly with "problem" and the child. I don't think they have as much to say about "the mystery" of the child. I compare the mystery of the child to the mystery of a work of art: I am not sure that social scientists have much to say to help in interpreting a Mozart sonata, a Monet painting, or a chocolate souffle. Dealing with the child demands many approaches and disciplines, so experts who deal with each need one another.