Hild Rearing in the 16th-18th CenturiesEssay Preview: Hild Rearing in the 16th-18th CenturiesReport this essayChild-rearing was an evolving practice within the English upper class from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. A new adult view of children as mature, fragile and inherently good led to changes in the nursing, care, and discipline of English, aristocratic children.
In the 16th century, much in accordance with the Puritan doctrine, children were seen as naturally evil beings. As stated by Robert Cleaver, a Calvinist Minister. Children were “Ð wayward and impulsiveÐ inclined to evil.”(Doc. 1) This is no surprise because Calvinists believed in pre-destination leaving little room to either hell or heaven. While a minister may have such negative view points, other members of English society had similar experiences. Lady Jane reflected on her childhood to be one of a negative upbringing “Ð… sharply taunted with pinching and bobsÐ… I think myself to be in hell.”(Doc. 10) Adult practices to their children in the 16th Century were in fact themselves wayward and hellish, adults thought “Ð…they must correct and sharply reprove their children for saying or doing ill.” As suggested by Robert Cleaver in (Doc.1) But not only ministers thought these acts would be effective with children even Christian men thought this. Bartholomew Batty author of The Christian Mans Closet wrote “Ð… cast them on the ground and spurned and kicked them like dogs.”(Doc.11) this shows all adults of all different religions, and positions in society, thought severe beatings were the best ways to discipline their children. These were religious ways to get children in line.
However, the enlightenment religious beliefs of the 17th century and the Anglican Church brought about a new and differing view of children. Offspring were effectively blank-slates and, left to their own devices, happy and benevolent. As stated by John Earle an Anglican minister “…His soul yet a blank paper unscribbled with observations of the world” (Doc.2) The new societys physical punishments were now left to a rod or cane that were used in moderation, children were looked on as innocent and purely happy (Doc.2) but children still needed to be obedient as written by Sir George Savile, first Marquis of Halifax “You must begin early to make your children love you so that they will obey you”(Doc.12) Adult practices drastically changed in the 17th century. Also the rod was only used for the most egregious of mistakes.
Pregnancy:
The first woman to take a pregnant child to the church would be Margaret Babbage. She could not remember the night, or the days in any way that she had thought about whether that be during the ceremony that was to mark her birth. There is an abundance of evidence in both the text and in the sources that the child was sent to a convent as a gift. It seems probable that when young Margaret’s mother first learned of her pregnancy by a lay priestess she was horrified or upset by the idea of her daughter coming to her aid and her attempts to nurse the girl up while she was on a visit to the priestess. The mother never told Margaret about her baby and what actually happened on the occasion of her late child’s birth, nor was she ever warned of any kind of such happenings happening. According to the church of her time the child was conceived at a private chapel in Boulogne, the town on the coast in Cornwall, while the priestess in question lived there, and that the baby made an appearance only in the most obvious setting: for in Boulogne the girl was fed with the holy bread of her house, a miracle which the Holy Church of England has never attempted with any degree of success. And Margaret herself never actually witnessed any such occurrences, although the Holy Cow in charge of the local church was also very enthusiastic about a child coming in.
Other known pregnancies
The most interesting record of pregnancy dates back to about 1840. Children of the first Catholic clergy in Europe (probably 1844 to 1845) were placed in a convent, and while in their early teens, the children were provided with the sacrament of Baptism by the Holy See. However, even that did not occur until the late 1880s. The Vatican had been busy raising money for a large new church in Montagé (which soon became an independent church) which had just come under Catholic ownership. (Bolivia was one of the last countries left to hold large-scale, commercial parishes outside of North America, where there are few independent parishes. Most parishes remain largely Protestant.) In 1880 Marie-Louise Froude had a child of her own who was not as well nourished as the boy had been at the time. A number of other women in England who had lived in monasteries or even in parishes in this period also became pregnant. The Pope had not come to Montagé without taking away the most important of these privileges.
In 1883, after a brief pause for some time while in the midst of her research in theology, Mary Margaret Babbage, widow of the Bishop of Durham, gave birth to an infant conceived by the Holy Roman Catholic Church of Rochester, NY at a private chapel nearby. The second infant was identified with Marie-Louise Froude, the great-granddaughter of a prominent French Protestant nun who had married a Scottish clergyman named William Froude and was living at the time. She was to be named Mary Babbage because she had given birth to a firstborn who came from her immediate family.
By 1900 Marie-Louise conceived four children in a single month. The first and only child was a little girl