The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought by Alexander Francis Chamberlain

Author:Alexander Francis Chamberlain [Alexander Francis Chamberlain]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Where, as in ancient Rome, for example, the flourished in primitive vigour—Mommsen says, "all in the household were destitute of legal rights—the wife and the child no less than the bullock or the slave" (166. 229), children could in nowise act as members of society. Westermarck (166. 213–239) shows to what extent and to what age the , or guardianship of the father over his children, was exercised in Rome, Greece, among the Teutonic tribes, in France. In the latter country even now "a child cannot quit the paternal residence without the permission of the father before the age of twenty-one, except for enrolment in the army. For grave misconduct by his children the father has strong means of correction. A son under twenty-five and a daughter under-twenty-one cannot marry without the consent of their parents; and even when a man has attained his twenty-fifth year, and the woman her twenty-first, both are still bound to ask for it, by a formal notification." Westermarck's observations on the general subject are as follows:—"There is thus a certain resemblance between the family institution of savage tribes and that of the most advanced races. Among both, the grown-up son, and frequently the grown-up daughter, enjoys a liberty unknown among peoples at an intermediate stage of civilization. There are, however, these vital differences: that children in civilized countries are in no respect the property of their parents; that they are born with certain rights guaranteed to them by society; that the birth of children gives parents no rights over them other than those which conduce to the children's happiness. These ideas, essential as they are to true civilization, are not many centuries old. It is a purely modern conception the French Encyclopaedist expresses when he says, 'Le pouvoir paternel est plutot un devoir qu'un pouvoir'" (166. 239).

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