Children in Modern British History: A Review of "The Social History of Children's Views"

I recently finished reading a book on childhood studies, "A Social History of Children's Views" by Masaki Kitamoto, subtitled "Community, Family and Children in Modern Britain". This book covers a wide range of topics, and the prose is concise. Unfortunately, some of the text is a little boring, and the structure is not perfect. The reading experience is only average. To keep records for myself, and to recommend books to others, I decided to sort through some of it.

There are six chapters in "The Social History of Children's Views". The first chapter introduces the current situation of children's views on social research, as well as the author's research ideas and goals. The second chapter summarizes the social situation in the 17th century, and the third chapter discusses the modern society involving children in detail. The last three chapters are devoted to the topics of medicine, Puritan family consciousness and parenting books, showing the modern parenting scene from different aspects.

Most of the discussion in this article is directly taken from the book, and the main content revolves around two themes, involving children's individual life and socioeconomic conditions, and finally briefly discusses some of the things that concern them.

individual life status

The population dynamics before the British Industrial Revolution in the 1760s lacked continuous and reliable data, but from fragmentary information in different fields, we can get a clearer hint: the population dynamics of the United Kingdom maintained a stable sawtooth waveform during the 16th and 17th centuries. state, and it is a stable state of prolific death.

People of that era often felt that death was close by, and in their consciousness, the distance between life and death was very close. Decaying corpses are encountered in various scenes in daily life, and even the putrid smell of corpses is floating in the air. Too many people have died, and church headstones and cemeteries are often not enough. Therefore, the remains are often exhumed after being buried for more than ten days, and the corpses are exposed to people's sight. At that time, people's hearts were shrouded in the rupture of the continuity of life pointing to the future and the "impermanence of the eternal death of the living" influenced by the endless fantasy of death.

From the second half of the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century, Europe ushered in a period of cold. The long-term reduction of agricultural production and insufficient food supply brought about by the cold period has led to a deterioration of people's nutritional status and a marked decline in disease resistance. Various new endemic and infectious diseases strike people in chronic malnutrition. The expansion of trade and trade was accompanied by the spread of pathogenic bacteria, and people in the villages were completely unable to guard against new diseases.

A common feature of medicine in the 16th and 17th centuries was the use of various methods to drive out the "bad temperament" that caused disease from the body. There are two main methods, bloodletting therapy and vomiting and diarrhea. In many cases, these methods do not cure the disease, but instead cost the patient's life. Doctors themselves will also be life-threatening in the process of treating patients due to airborne infection, contact infection, etc. People dispose of the blood, vomit, etc. released very casually, and streets and small cities where crowds gather are likely to suffer a second infection. In addition to this, various prescription and folk remedies with magical properties are the main treatment methods.

Women are subject to the contingency of successive pregnancies and the harsh and prolific natural fecundity, and have no subjectivity to the reproductive process. For women at that time, the psychological distance from pregnancy to motherhood was very large, and having a child was almost equal to preparing for death.

Midwifery has been a woman's job since ancient Greek times. Midwives in the UK were originally licensed by the Church of England, but before the Midwifery Act was passed by Parliament in 1902, there was no public qualification review, only based on magical, magical knowledge and inherited folk therapy experience . As a result, midwifery levels of midwifery are low, with tragic outcomes in many cases.

After the 17th century, male birth assistants began to appear, and society despised men who entered this professional field, which also caused a strong dislike of traditional midwives. Forceps were invented in the early 17th century, but only became widespread in the 18th century. In the middle of the 18th century, doctors paid more and more attention to women's childbirth and infants and young children, so that various suggestions and reforms to reduce infant and young child mortality rates were advanced. In the second half of the 19th century, James Young Simpson combined anesthesia with midwifery to achieve painless childbirth. Although progress has been made in improving delivery techniques, it is questionable to what extent.

Before the 18th century, babies had little contact with their mothers because of the custom of swaddling and nursing. The custom of infants and young children being fostered is the biggest reason for shortening the contact time between mother and child, and this is also an important reason for the infant mortality rate as high as 400 per 1,000 or even 700 per 1,000.

The wrapping swaddle is a long and narrow strip of cloth. Shortly after the baby is born, the baby's hands and feet are straightened, from the shoulders to the feet, and the baby is wrapped in a circle like a mummy, so that their hands and feet are Can't move at all. Babies in bondage are often left or hung somewhere to be forgotten, or even dumped like garbage in the forest or by the road. Babies hung on nails, in a state of semi-suffocation, do not cry to disturb others. The swaddling presses on the ribs, weakening lung function and reducing oxygen absorption. Babies breathe very weakly, cough and vomit frequently.

Nursing mothers tie up babies in foster care to make them look fat. The folds of the hard linen cloth embedded in the baby's skin, causing the baby's skin to bruise and turn black and red. Urine and feces stick to the skin and are not treated in time, resulting in the baby's skin often prone to erythema and scrofula-like bumps, and the baby is often afflicted by chronic skin diseases. Nursing mothers let babies who have been soaked in their own feces start to stink and make no sound for weeks, with little to no cleaning and hygiene. Nursing mothers rely on their own convenience to breastfeed as often as they want, and the quality of breastfeeding is also very poor. Babies are often attacked by life-threatening diseases such as hyperacidity, abnormal intestinal fermentation, abdominal pain, green stools, cramps, intestinal blockage, and high fever. Adults use drugs to treat or stabilize infants, and there are no safety standards for drug use, and inappropriate drug use is more fatal.

Charismatic care is also one of the reasons for the high infant mortality rate. Loss of appetite in babies can be seen as worms, and many people make babies drink mercury or tin powder, which often causes babies to be in a debilitating state. For healthy children, adults are fed with their hands. Edible utensils made of white wax, lead, copper and other materials, as well as breastfeeding nipples that are rarely washed, continuously bring harmful toxins and pathogenic bacteria such as heavy metals into the baby's body.

Newborn life expectancy is not long. It was estimated that the life expectancy of a newborn in England in the 1640s was 32 years. Even by the 1730s, 60% of newborns died within 5 years of birth. Even children who have passed through infancy and early childhood are rarely able to live long.

In an age where death is extremely routine, parents do not expect too much about the future of their children who do not know when they will die, and project special feelings towards them. Parents often give the name of a child who died shortly after birth to the next child, which implies that the child is a stand-in for the dead child. People look forward to good luck and have a child with a longer life, so the same name is often used multiple times, and there is a strong desire for family continuity. From the end of the 16th century, as Protestantism spread in daily life, people began to worship in the family, but the "household Bible" rarely recorded the names of dead children. Give each child a unique name. After the child dies, engrave the child's name on the tombstone decorated with beautiful flowers, so that the image of the child before his death will remain in the hearts of parents and others. This kind of feeling takes root in society, even if In the upper class, it also began gradually after the middle of the 18th century.

The psychological aspect, consciousness and emotion of the parent-child relationship in a prolific and prolific society are very different from the modern maternal love, paternal love and the relationship called "parent-child bond".

socioeconomic status

Traditional home economics books were written for men with full responsibility for managing the economic activities and interpersonal relationships of extended families, and were characterized by the naive, empirical, encyclopedic body of knowledge that men needed to take on their major responsibilities. It covers interpersonal relationships in the entire family, as well as specific technical knowledge necessary for the self-sufficient family economy at that time, such as farm management, fruit tree cultivation, brewing methods, herbal medicine, animal husbandry, water supply, forestry, and child rearing.

The traditional housekeeping book is based on a large-lord type of management centered on agriculture. This mode of operation is maintained by the unpaid labor of the territorial family members and the master's overall rule over all members, so it must adopt a "whole family" structure premised on the superiority of the male head of the family. "Home" functions as a basic social element under the broad "Constitution", thus forming a "freedom" to ensure "family peace".

Children living in such a society determine the meaning of their existence entirely within the scope of economic concerns. Children born in open, extended families based on kinship and ancestry, defenseless against the rules of the community, are placed in a network of mutual support, mutual surveillance, and mutual interference. Children have become an important tool for stable family management according to the system of limited succession, primogeniture or dowry. Among them, the formation of alliances between communities or families within a community through the marriage of children plays an important role in maintaining the balance of economic power. Supporting this structure of existence of children is the view of children as economic capital.

The traditional way of combining housekeeping books with agriculture was formed after the 16th century. In the era of mercantilism, the character of the "Book of Patriarchs" was further enhanced, which reflected less of the stability of territorial rule than of a crisis.

After the children are weaned, they begin to speak, and when their teeth are in place, both boys and girls are sent to foster care in another family where they need to walk for a day or two, where they receive the same life training as adults. This practice, known as "foster care", was fairly common in England around 1500. Usually, children leave the home at the age of 7 and work as domestic helpers until they are 14 years old.

For the middle and lower classes, foster care has two overlapping interests. Foster care is accepted by some families because these families are in times of need for child labor. Children must endure harsh labor and plunder under the condition that they receive a minimum guarantee of food, clothing and housing. For families with surplus population, sending children to foster care can adjust the family size, reduce the burden of parenting, and "reduce the mouth to eat" for a period of time. However, this approach often becomes a permanent "reducing mouth to eat", because the mortality rate of children who are sent to foster care or apprenticeship is very high, mainly due to poor nutritional status and harsh labor looting, and then Plus all kinds of physical and emotional abuse, including sexual abuse. Foster care arose out of the balance of fertility, nurturing ability and labor demands of some families in the community, and it was also an economic and social representation of the view of children in an era when children were regarded as consumables.

After the foster care period is over, the child has about 7 years of apprenticeship after the age of 14. According to the Apprenticeship Act of 1563, children were required to acquire professional skills that would enable them to support themselves during this time. The promotion of this apprenticeship system began to erode the natural economic system of the rural community based on land cultivation from the inside, heralding the arrival of the era of the formation of a field of occupation that did not depend on land.

The training for professional people is not limited to men only, and the various occupations produced during the long transition from the Middle Ages to modern times are equally and open to women. Women are very active in the professional field. Almost all the textile and silk industries, most of the weaving industry, and the winemaking industry (mainly wine) are in the hands of women, who can support themselves with the skills they have mastered.

In the long-term process of transformation from rural communities to urban industrial society, the simple division of labor that accompanies agricultural production has shifted to mining, ironmaking, manufacturing, distribution, and sales that are accompanied by factory production and large-scale market circulation. The transformation of the new complex division of labor.

The occupation of the father, who used to be a role model for children's socialization, has lost its traditional value, and parents cannot provide guidance for their children's career choices, and have to rely on media and publishing organizations outside the family. The increasingly complex division of labor in society has made it impossible for most children and young people in society to accept the traditional role of parents as they are.

Due to the development of the division of labor in the community, the growth of the peasant stratum, and the promotion of rural workshops, the traditional foundation for expanding the family has been eroded, showing a very obvious tendency to decline. In parallel with this, the regionalization of Puritans that began to appear at the end of the 16th century once again strengthened the authority of the male patriarch and produced the "limited patriarchal nuclear family". In this way, instead of the previous blood-lineage relationship, the husband-wife and son-centered husband-wife family is strengthened, the psychological and ethical relationship of the husband and wife family is valued, the bond of love within the family is strengthened, and in addition to the emergence of external relations between the family and the family. people with cold feelings.

This kind of mentality peculiar to the modern family spread among the emerging gentry class, professional craftsman class, and homesteading class. From the end of the 16th century to the first half of the 17th century, the upsurge of parenting books and education books were aimed at these three classes, focusing on couples. The ethical approach between time and between parents and children, in particular, has gradually strengthened the moral concern for children.

Compared with corporal punishment, the Puritans held the view of children that psychological punishment is more effective, which is fundamentally different from the traditional view of the original sin determinism. The strict ascetic discipline in the Puritan family was a reflection of a belief in the educability of children. If they only accept the original sin theory of the Middle Ages as they are, and believe in the permanence of children's original sin, they will not show such a heightened awareness of self-reform and education of children.

The one-way projection of adult ascetic and authoritative values and a rational arrangement that was close to cruelty for the purpose of children's socialization were nothing more than "intrusive" and "intrusive" interference to the children at that time. It is easy to form a parent-child relationship that suppresses the heart. From a romantic standpoint, children who are forced to obey their parents absolutely and respectfully are ruthlessly repressed in a state of passivity and powerlessness.

In an era when parenting books and parenting books began to replace the publication of traditional home economics books, in order to replace the previous domination from an economic point of view, children must accept the authoritative domination of their fathers as moral teachers. At the moment when the "restricted patriarchal nuclear family" frees children from the network of the old traditional value system of the community, they enclose children in the moralistic nuclear family. Another element of this kind of circle is the motherhood emphasized in Puritanism. The housekeeping books and parenting books written by the Puritans attached great importance to breastfeeding. The book's account of the duties of the wife and mother in the family served to confine women of this period into the family. The more zealously the father advocates the sanctification of the family with lofty moral concepts, the more clearly the ethical value and rationalization will be to encircle women and children into the family and educate them. Confining women into nuclear families that gradually lose their productive functions means blocking the way for women to become economically independent. This is the biggest contradiction surrounding the parent-child relationship in modern times in the long-term "transition period", and this contradiction has profoundly affected the ideologies of parenting theory, early childhood education theory and educational thought that appeared later.

Before and after the start of the Industrial Revolution, the early marriages of the family-dominated industries were in stark contrast to the late marriages of the upper class.

When examining the relationship between the Industrial Revolution and children, one generally focuses on the tragic situation of child labor in factories, while often ignoring the problem of child labor in domestic industries before this period. The factory system had a huge impact on the philanthropists because the profits of the capitalists directly depended on child labor, and these facts were in the public eye, and child labor had already existed hidden in domestic industry.

The popularization of cottage industries in the countryside can ensure a certain standard of living, and children are staying in their own homes longer than before. In this way, foster care gradually declined, and parents began to think about keeping their children in their own homes for as long as possible. As simple labor, which does not require much proficiency, enters the production process, an industrial structure of simple labor or auxiliary labor of children, which can be used as "capital for the poor", emerges. Parents began to have more children in order to rely on the labor of their children to obtain labor income calculated by the number of people. In the past, most of the children born died before the age of fourteen or fifteen. Now, "if the child dies, the loss will be great." In the first half of the 18th century, with the prosperity of domestic industry, to maintain the development of domestic industry, it was necessary to have as many laborers as possible. Through their own labor, young people could establish new families at a relatively young age. The decline in age at first marriage reflects the decline of traditional apprenticeships during this period. In the age of apprenticeship, young people who were finally liberated from the apprenticeship of the master at the age of 21 could not obtain the conditions for self-reliance before the age of 30. Now, young people can get married and become self-reliant earlier through their own salary income. .

However, there are also some problems with the declining age of first marriage. Young people have a certain economic ability, they have a family when they are relatively young, and it can be maintained when the newlyweds can increase the income of the family as a labor force. Once a child is born, the labor force is halved for childcare. By the time children can add to the family's income as a young labor force, the family's financial situation is close to bankruptcy. After the children began to work gradually, the family income increased in proportion to the number of children, and life began to be nourished. After the children became independent and left the family, the family fell into poverty again.

In the years 1790-1810, when the Industrial Revolution officially began, the parent-child relationship, which was also a family industry, was very different from that of the grandparents. Young people in the village can gain a certain life foundation in the process of self-reliance, but it does not last long. After the domestic industrial production has reached saturation, wages begin to decrease, and the redundant children and young people in the village have to leave the village and go to the town or small city to find a new source of livelihood, thus reducing the number of people who make up the family . The increase in the number of children has also resulted in an increase in the number of small and medium-sized families in cities.

Most of the second and third sons of nobles and landlord families choose the path of obtaining annuity by taking positions in the army or the church. The close combination of the upper classes and official positions was gradually severely criticized by the industrial capitalist class, the gentry class, and the big businessman class.

Industry has become the usual career choice for the second and third sons of the gentry, industrial capitalists, and merchants. People in these classes place more emphasis on practical studies that contribute to social advancement than scholasticism. In the process of the disintegration of housekeeping books, the shrinking of family size, the adoption of closed buildings, and the generalization of family characteristics that value personal privacy and comfort, these classes of people pay more attention to the morality and education that play a role in children's development. For these classes of people who have been liberated from the old-style community, it is not the community and land that have elements of mutual assistance and are linked by blood ties that can ensure their personal safety and stability, but the acquisition of knowledge through education, and the ability to A skill to survive in the business world. For those who are fortunate, their parents have accumulated wealth, and in order to maintain the industry and to enable the rising family to continue to prosper in the next generation, the education of children is the most important thing. Throughout the 18th century, there was a saying that "parents' responsibilities are fulfilled after conferring social status and family business to the next generation", and this statement contained a very clear sense of crisis.

The increase in practical colleges, grammar schools, private schools, and law schools during this period is a reflection of the high educational demands of this social class. In parallel with this kind of school for the middle class, from 1700 to 1770, in villages and towns around the country, "maiden's schools", "night schools" and other forms of "primary schools" were successively established for the children of the middle and lower classes. A period of stable development has come. For parents in modern nuclear families who are very concerned about the upbringing and education of children, it is the schools with smaller students in the community that are expected to improve the educational effect of comprehensive care of children as "parents' agents". The number of students in this period was not determined by the intervention of the state as it is today, but a compromise between the needs of teachers' livelihood and parents' expectations for school education. Parents have the right to choose the size of the school. Contents other than literacy and numeracy cannot be taught in "elementary schools". Subjects such as music, dance, drawing, and fencing are taught on an individually paid basis by "touring teachers" who regularly visit the town. Corresponding to the ability of parents to pay, the size of the school and the content of education are available.

However, this delicate relationship between home and school changed after the 1780s. During the education boom that officially emerged during this period, parents began to raise the standards for choosing schools. Therefore, fierce competition was launched among schools and teachers to attract students, and admission fees and tuition fees were reduced one after another. The result of such competition is the following two situations: On the one hand, because the tuition fees are too cheap, it is difficult for teachers to make a living. Besides teaching, they also do side jobs such as bookstores, small grocery stores, and make-up lessons at night, but they are not enough to make up for the lack of livelihood. We can only find a way to survive by increasing the number of students; on the other hand, for parents, especially the lower middle-class people who could not send their children to school due to the high tuition fees, due to the reduction of tuition fees, although the number of students can only be taught uniformly, There is a price to be paid in the quality of teaching, but the opportunity to be educated is still obtained. It also means expanded access to education.

Another new trend that reflects the popular theme of parent-child relationship is the extremely successful commercialization of the emerging children's culture. The middle class, who had basically no chance to go to school in their childhood, paid a lot of fees to the school and competed to buy cheap pocket books, educational game equipment, children's clothing, toys and other items for their children.

Because of the emergence of many parents who are enthusiastic about education, the education boom is higher than before, and its content is more lesson and discipline. After the 1770s, more than 30 educational games entered the family. At the end of the 18th century, "intellectual women" in the background of the evangelical movement imposed moral readings on children, making this orientation towards social ascension of the middle class through education a very depressing affair.

The parent-child relationship in the nuclear family, which valued emotion in modern times, produced new forms of control over the child's psychological and social structure. Instead of seeing children as descendants of the original sinful Adam and Eve, urban parents saw children as mediators or means of social competition. In a sense, children become the object of showing off, and parents show off to each other based on the amount of child-raising expenses and the depth of their education and ethical concern for children. Children linger between the upper and lower limits of this indicator and become the senior pets of their parents. They are either coddled and underpowered, or they are treated like animal pets and treated as general objects. The child's natural sensibility and rich imagination are suppressed so that these abilities cannot develop freely and creatively into noble emotions. Behind this up and down flow are sensitive entrepreneurs who see children as a new market. After "the concept of children as economic capital", there are "the concept of children as social rising leverage" and "the concept of children as economic debt".

a little impression

I had a wonderful sense of pleasure while reading " Discipline and School Riots ."

As a child, I longed for unrestricted freedom and believed that blocking action and shaping thought would be a violation of freedom. I have a desire to be violent. I thought about expelling, beating, and even killing my classmates and teachers when I was in school. However, under the influence of the concept of not harming others and the social restrictions on violence, most of them were not implemented.

I can't help but get excited when I see content about student violence, such as "Small things or misunderstandings between students or between teachers and students can easily turn into killings" "Evicted teacher brandishing whip outside window trying to quiet students , but this kind of intimidation was ineffective. Under the command of the leader with a long sword, the students destroyed the teaching materials and teaching aids." "In order to suppress the students' riots, the local government even dispatched two companies equipped with several cannons. ".

In my opinion, school represents confinement and repression. Schools are institutions that control and domesticate students. By means of ideological indoctrination and interest coercion, students are allowed to adapt to and accept the power structure and be comfortable with oppressed situations. Careful attention to the psychological and physical injuries suffered by students will reveal that this group has strong endurance and obedience. If the restraint and brainwashing of students by families and society is not successful enough, the violent incidents caused by young people will be more frequent and intense. For example, teachers who are keen on corporal punishment or verbal violence need to worry not about reckoning after the fall, but blood on the spot. In a middle school that oppresses students, the "swearing-in meeting" will become a "slaying meeting".

Many children are indeed better off now and are more valued than those of the past, but the shadows that lie beneath the surface of civilization are also worth noting. The public's romanticized imagination and idealized expectations of children also imprison children, limit their development possibilities, and impose hidden and rationalized violence on them.