Marriage and the child / by James H.S. Bossard.

  • Bossard, James H. S. (James Herbert Siward), 1888-1960.
Date:
1940
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Marriage and the child / by James H.S. Bossard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    32 MARRIAGE AND THE CHILD one day. . . . Elizabeth Tanfield (1585-1639), Lady Tanfield, while speaking to her mother, always knelt before her. . . In colonial New England, children were to be seen, not heard, and the less they were in evidence to the eye the better. Letters and diaries contain little mention of them. There was no purpose to make the child appear valuable or noteworthy to himself or others. Scientific child study was a thing of the future.® . . . Families were large j infant and maternal mor¬ tality were excessively highj child labor, the inevitable third of this customary trinity, was everywhere evident. ... A stern theology distorted the conception of childhood, and the logical outcome of that theology of child depravity was wholly contrary to any appreciation of child nature or needs. Whitefield, the great preacher, likens them to rattlesnakes and alligators, which he says are likewise beautiful when small. Jonathan Edwards called them young vipers. He says: As innocent as children seem to be to us, yet, if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, but are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers.^ . . . Child manners were formal and meek. Home discipline was relentless. The rod was the accepted standard of subjugation. The view of John Robinson, the Pilgrim preacher, that there is in all children (though not alike) a stub- berness and stoutness of mind arising from naturall pride which must in the first place be broken and beaten down, was generally shared by parents.® The law upheld stern parental authority. For incorrigible disobedience to parents the penalty was death.^ What every student of American social history knows is that, in the years since, these earlier and sterner attitudes have changed. Miss Grace Abbott, former Chief of the Federal Children's Bureau, has shown recently, in a noteworthy collec- ® Arthur W. Calhoun, A Social History of the American Family, Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, 1917, Volume I, pp. 29-515 H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann, Social England, G. P. Putnams' Sons, 1902-1903, Volumes III, IV. ® Calhoun, of. cit.y Volume I, p. 105. ^ Jonathan Edwards, Works, New York, 1881, Volume III, p. 340. ® Quoted from W. Goodsell, Problem of the Family, The Century Company, New York, 1928, edition, p. 76. ® Calhoun, of. cit., Volume I, Chapters VI, XVII.