Early Modern View Of Childhood

Childhood: An Early Modern View

Question:

Analyze continuities and changes in methods of child-rearing among the English upper classes from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. How did adult views of children shape adult practices toward their children?

Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century, methods for childrearing were based on the adult perceptions of children. While some methods remained, others were being removed. These methods of childrearing fluctuated with the centuries, with adult views, and in accordance to previously set standards.

The sixteenth century's perception of a child was that of a harsh origin. According to the Calvinist minister, Rober Cleaver, babies were born with an evil, wrong-doing heart, and they laid in a cradle in both a rebellious and hasty manner. Left-handed children were also badly thought of. According to Cleaver, children born this way were to be scolded and their left
hand was to be bound up and the use of it put to restriction. This suggests that, even before they knew what the child was like, a left-handed child was bad. Based on Bartholemew Batty's account, children were beaten like they were not humans, but rather animals. They were clouted and buffeted about the face and head by their parents.

The seventeenth century saw children as innocent beings.
According to the Anglican minister John Earl, children had a blank soul, not yet written on with observations of the world. No teacher had ever "drawn" on them; they were not, in a sense, contaminated by the world's evilness. The child is happy because they know no evil. When it came to breastfeeding, they no longer felt that a wet nurse was right to have. According to Elizabeth Clinton, nursing is the sole duty of the mother, no one else should be allowed to do so. Unlike the sixteenth century's mode of discipline to raise a child right, the seventeenth century's parents felt that a child should be made to love a parent from the very beginning of its thought. According to Sir George Savile, first Marquis of Halifax, a child should not be denied, when it seemed impossible to not deny them, then it was to be done tenderly and with regret. A child should not have to look or ask for an object of desire, but a parent should know what and when to get something for their
child.

The eighteenth century's view of childhood was greatly relaxed from those of the sixteenth, and even the seventeenth century. According to the author of an Anglican rector to the Verney family, a child is sweet-tempered, content, and with an exuberance of spirit. Breastfeeding of a child by its mother was just as important in the eighteenth century as it was in the seventeenth, but with much more condemnation if not done by the mother. According to Thomas Gisborne, author of a popular handbook entitled "An Enquiry in the Duties of the Female Sex," breastfeeding and the self-nursing of a child by its mother is the first of all parental duties. Lady Duncannon in a letter to Georgiana, Lady Spencer, acknowledged how perfectly well a newborn child was after being breastfed by his mother, and how happy it can make even the father. It made the child's father proud, and glad that his child was being breastfed by the mother. The discipline of a child, although similar to that of a seventeenth century child, was much less limited. According to Lady Luisa Stuart upon observances of Lord Holland's son, children were allowed through their education many passions, whims, and caprices. Basically, what they wanted to do was more than likely granted to them.

Methods of disciplining a child throughout the centuries changed with a parent's view of their child. If a parent thought their child had evil thoughts from birth, their punishments would be severe. If, as in the eighteenth century, a child was viewed as content, happy, and jubilant, as well as innocent, there would be less severe to hardly any consequence for wrong-doing, do to the fact that they were considered innocent.