A History of Childhood by Heywood Colin;

Author:Heywood, Colin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2018-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Breaking the will

The most challenging role for the more ‘intrusive’ parents, be they Catholic or Protestant, was passing on moral and religious values. For as long as most people believed in the innate depravity of children, the only way they could envisage breaking in such stubborn creatures was by drawing up a tight set of rules and strictly enforcing them. This did not necessarily mean resorting to severe corporal punishment, though a minority of parents were convinced of the need to, almost literally, beat the hell out of their offspring. John Calvin, for example, asserted that children's nature was a ‘seed of sin’, which some of his followers used as a justification for physical punishments, but Calvin himself did not recommend these.61 Even without such physical chastisements, however, the regime was often a rigid one. Consider the orders barked out by a German manual on disciplining and instructing children, dating from 1519:

Sleep neither too little nor too much. Begin each day by blessing it in God's name and saying the Lord's Prayer. Thank God for keeping you through the night and ask his help for the new day. Greet your parents. Comb your hair and wash your face and hands.62

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