VIEWS ON CHILDHOOD BEFORE 17th CENTURY

Is there any real childhood before the 17th century?

Some sociologist state that there were no childhood phase before the 1600

Main Sociologist : Philippe Aries, Lawrence Stone, Lloyd De Mause

Philippe Aries said that the idea of children should be treated separately from adults-childhood is a separate and distinct phase of life- dates back only a few centuries in Europe

Before 1600 ‘the idea of childhood did not exist…as soon as the child could live without the constant solicitude of his mother, his nanny or his cradle rocker he belonged to the society’

Aries and Lloyd De Mause painted a very negative childhood

De Mause (The History of Childhood)

"The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken."believing that;"The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused".

Lawrence Stone : The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500 to 1800 (1977) argues from a note in an account book ;

A 17th-century man wrote, “Paid for my loving son’s John’s funeral, 2 shillings and six pence.”

that parents of that era were indifferent to the deaths of their children, proving that parents were not bonded to their children and therefore did not grieve at a child’s death.

Aries concluded that there was no concept of childhood as a state different to adulthood in these centuries, and therefore, even if parents did feel affection for their offspring, they did not fully understand how to respond to the emotional needs of their children.

Stone too focused on the "evolution" of the family through these three centuries, arguing that the family changed from being of an "open lineage" structure in which family relationships were formal and repressed, to the "domesticated nuclear family", which resulted in "affective individualism".

The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800.

It has been argued by Stone, Aries and De Mause, that there was a growing awareness of childhood as a state different to adult hood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.According to them, society was beginning to appreciate that children were not miniature adults, but were at a substantially lower level of maturity, and so had distinct needs from adults - protection, love and nurturing.

Lawrence Stone argues that one of the reasons why parents and children were emotionally distant in the early part of this period, was because of the high infant mortality rate.He argues that parents were reluctant to invest love and care in their children, because of the pain losing them would cause. (His point was argued by Linda Pollock)

Aries states that the separation of childhood from adulthood is the product of later centuries.

• In 1750, more infants died than lived •Dead children began to be represented on their parents tombs•Child become more valued, but still no separate world of childhood (all the family members slept in the same room , children of the lower classes went out to work )•In the 1880s: ->> school attendance become compulsory ->> school-leaving age gradually raised• Results in the new position of children ( dependant and loved )

CONCLUSION ON ARIES ET AL VIEWS

There was no real division of childhood and adulthood before

17th century

CRITISM FOR PHILIPPE ARIES ET AL VIEWS

Some sociologist were against the opinion that childhood did not exist before the 17th century

Main sociologists : Linda Pollock, April Brayfield and Marilyn Brown

In the early 1980's, Linda Pollock in her influential, yet highly controversial work, Forgotten Children : Parent - child Relations 1500-1900, harshly criticised all the arguments made by Aries, de Mause and Stone.

From her intensive study of over four hundred diaries and journals, she argued that childhood experiences were not as grim as they suggest it was. She strongly denies that there were any fundamental changes in the way parents viewed or reared their children in this period;

"The texts reveal no significant change in the quality of parental care given to, or the amount of affection felt for infants for the period 1500-1900".

Pollock's work has received support from Rosemary O'Day and Mary Abbot, who both deny that childhood "evolved" considerably in this period

Marilyn Brown : before the 18th century, children were often depicted as miniature adults in paintings.

That’s one reason the historian refuted by Pollock – Philippe Aries- in his Centuries of Childhood (1962) mistakenly deduced there was no concept of childhood then

She argues that if this was the case, then one would expect the indifference towards children to have prevailed as long as the death rate. Pollock argues that contrary to reducing parental emotional investment, the high death rate only served to heighten their anxiety in times of illness, and increase their level of care. (Lawrence Stone’s point of view)

Children depicted as miniature adults in

paintings

Ilana Ben-Amos argues that parents would only part with their children when it was absolutely essential. In the early seventeenth century for example, it was only after James Fretwell, who was then only four years old, came home weeping because he could not manage the distance between Sandal and Yorkshire every day, that his father out of concern for his welfare put him to lodge with a widow in Sandal.

A STORY BASED ON LINDA POLLOCK’S RESEARCH

Nehemiah Wallington, a London chair maker who lived from 1598 to 1658, ‘talked’ about his sorrow at the death of his daughter Elizabeth, age 4.

It’s a tough time for a religious parent when a child gets sick->> they could only watch and pray helplessly over an ill child because medical care was so ineffective->> their religious faith assured them that a dying child was being called by God to a better place

Pollock said : “You could see them go back and forth here by these emotional pulls, pulling you apart,” How could they dispense with God’s will when they were meant to be obedient to God’s will?

Wallington, based on his diary , said :

“I did forget my God in this because my grief for this child was so great I couldn’t stop myself from it”

“The grief for this child was so great that I forget myself so much that I did offend God in it; I broke all my purposes, promises and covenants wit my God, for I was much distracted in my mind, and could not be comforted, although my friends speak comfortably unto me”

Linda Pollock

Parentchild relationships have some cultural differences and slightly differences in degree, but, essentially, they do not

change

Parents are enormously

emotionally invested in their childrenIf we’re going to argue that parental care

changes so much to the degree that historians have argued – we’re denying the basic capacity of human beings to handle

emotional involvement

The ‘pasts’ cared deeply for and truly loved their children . ‘I don’t think we

as humans as a species can reproduce without an enormous

amount of emotional investment’

CONCLUSION ON POLLOCK’S ET AL VIEWS

Children are always loved, even before the 17th century

Children as a result of Social Construction

Age of Innocence by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Jean Renoir Sewing by Pierre-Auguste

Renoir

Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

By Mary Cassatt

The End