Before anyone dismisses this as ludicrous, small-minded, or Victorian, consider: Our culture places enormous emphasis on success in toilet training in our early years. There are many cultures in the world where children have little or no experience with the trauma of the porcelain throne, but here the toilet is ubiquitous, and so for us the symbolic project that carries so much the nuance of autonomy, control, and mastery is absorbed into how we manage the vision of the void beneath us.
