In recognizing how ""puritan" has been a synonym for joyless, repressed behaviour" (7) for several hundred years, Daniels shows how since the 1930s, scholars have contested this view. In 1930 and 1939, respectively, Perry Miller and Samuel Eliot Morison argued that Puritans also sought pleasure, didn't avoid drinking, and were even encouraged by the ministry to enjoy a certain balance in life--that is, they don't appear to have been sanctioned for enjoying themselves, nor did they believe joy implied sin (12). For example, Edmund Morgan, a student of Miller, further argued that sex was treated candidly (13). Complicating these assertions, according to Daniels, is that in contrast to what the ministry said, we are not clear on how the average person behaved (15). More recent debates cite Miler and company as painting "Puritans as twentieth-century moderates in their views on pleasure," which they were not (16). One interesting line of inquiry has come from psychologists, who note how notions about child raising involved repression and submission, and with a current lens, it is possible that successive generations may have had trauma that may have affected their behavior as adults. The same difficulty applies, however. We cannot accept a guide on childrearing as a set of rules to which people adhered. Rather, we might see them as the complex characters they prove to be.