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
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