History of childhood
The historian Stephen Wilson argues that in the context of pre-industrial poverty and high infant mortality (with a third or more of the babies dying), actual child-rearing practices represented appropriate behavior in the circumstances.
However, the typical pattern in Western Europe was the much simpler nuclear family of husband, wife and their children (and perhaps a servant, who might well be a relative).
In the Middle Ages the major cathedrals operated education programs for small numbers of teenage boys designed to produce priests.
[4] In England during the Elizabethan era, the transmission of social norms was a family matter and children were taught the basic etiquette of proper manners and respecting others.
English philosopher John Locke was particularly influential in defining this new attitude towards children, especially with regard to his theory of the tabula rasa, promulgated in his 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
During the early period of capitalism, the rise of a large, commercial middle class, mainly in the Protestant countries of Holland and England, brought about a new family ideology centred around the upbringing of children.
[8] Throughout the course of the Early Modern Period, childhood was split into multiple sections: adolescence, working and familial jobs, education, and sexual relations and marriage.
Philippe Ariès performed a study on childhood and argued that in theory and practice, adolescence was almost unknown, stating that once a child had reached the age of six or seven, they would become part of the adult world.
Youth was governed by the red choler, which was also associated with hotness and dryness, with the summer season, and with fire...The notion of youth as a period governed by hot temper, or humour, or fire...could be used to evoke a variety of qualities: boldness, arrogance, excessive activity, rashness, a spirit easily drawn to quarrelling and vengeance, and especially to disobedience, riot, and rebelliousness.
Because of this, parents were responsible for providing their children with “constant and diligent nurturing, strict discipline, and a proper education,"[11] as part of the Catholic role in parenthood.
This includes, “fetching water and gathering sticks for fuel, going on errands, assisting mothers in milking, preparing food, cleaning, washing and mending.
Younger children helped with harrowing, scaring birds away from corn, pulling weeds, gathering fruits, and spreading dung for food.
[22] Professions associated with “higher learning, the church, law, medicine, business and crafts, military service, the Navy and husbandry,” [22] were deemed appropriate for men.
Liberal educational programs in England intended to prepare “‘gentlemen for Parliament, the pulpit, and the bar; for the management of private estates and public works for the professions and scholarship.’”[25] Because of the abundant opportunities, men rose to positions of power, whether it be in the household or politics.
This included “casual companionship” [30] at public events, but also meetings in much more private areas; this included “regular meetings, close familiarity, and a great deal of physical contact in private or semi-private places.”[30] On rare occasion, couples would spend an entire night together where “the young woman lived, in an alehouse, or in the open air.”[30] Following courtship, marriage ensued.
Women and men had similar characteristics in adolescence, but as they got older, both split ways to take on their gender-specific roles, which implemented the idea of a patriarchal society.
Building on the ideas of John Locke and other 17th-century thinkers, Rousseau described childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood.
"[33] The idea of childhood as a locus of divinity and innocence is further expounded upon in William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", the imagery of which he "fashioned from a complex mix of pastoral aesthetics, pantheistic views of divinity, and an idea of spiritual purity based on an Edenic notion of pastoral innocence infused with Neoplatonic notions of reincarnation".
Instead of depicting children as small versions of adults typically engaged in 'adult' tasks, they were increasingly shown as physically and emotionally distinct and were often used as an allegory for innocence.
[36] During this period children's education became more common and institutionalized, in order to supply the church and state with the functionaries to serve as their future administrators.
By the late 18th century, however, children were specially employed at the factories and mines and as chimney sweeps,[38] often working long hours in dangerous jobs for low pay.
[40] In 19th-century Great Britain, one-third of poor families were without a breadwinner, as a result of death or abandonment, obliging many children to work from a young age.
Reformers attacked child labor from the 1830s onward, bolstered by the horrific descriptions of London street life by Charles Dickens.
[42] The campaign that led to the Factory Acts was spearheaded by rich philanthropists of the era, especially Lord Shaftesbury, who introduced Bills in Parliament to mitigate the exploitation of children at the workplace.
[43] Legal interventions throughout the century increased the level of childhood protection, despite the prevalence of the Victorian laissez-faire attitude toward government interference.
[47] Lewis Carroll's fantasy Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865 in England, signalled the change in writing style for children to an imaginative and empathetic one.
One group of scholars, following the lead of novelists Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder, argue that the rural environment was salubrious.
Historians Katherine Harris[53] and Elliott West[54] write that rural upbringing promoted family interdependence, and in the end produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible, independent and more in touch with nature than their urban or eastern counterparts.
On the other hand, historians Elizabeth Hampsten[55] and Lillian Schlissel[56] offer a grim portrait of loneliness, privation, abuse, and demanding physical labor from an early age.
[58] By the turn of the 20th century, Japan had numerous reformers, child experts, magazine editors, and well-educated mothers who had adopted these new attitudes.
