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7000 BCE
Infanticide
From times even before Christ it was common to see how mothers or even by other people's designs that included reasons such as "girls were not valuable", punishments to mothers, illegitimate births, etc. They decided to kill newborn children in various ways that were torturous. -
300 BCE
Children as men of the future
In ancient times in greek , children were valued as the citizens of the future. In order to that, adult's began to give importance to their preparation and education in different areas. Poorer boys learned to work as craftsmen, farmers or fishermen instead. Girls stayed at home and were educated in household matters. They learned how to cook, weave clothing and look after the home. Many girls would be married by the age of 13 -
400
ABANDONMENT, NURSING AND SWADDLING
In this period, children are abandoned at a very early age by their mothers, they were sold, used as political hostages, as a way to pay debts or gived away giving excuses such as the need to teaching them to speak in a more appropriate way. On the other hand, it is also important to mention thar respecting the swaddling mothers on many occasions refused to feed their children and therefore the babies had to be fed with other types of milk or previously chewed food. -
800
" The child as a miniature adult and reincarnation of his mother"
The child was taken as a miniature adult who represented the reincarnation of his ancestors and who with actions was in charge of taking care of those around him when necessary by taking different representations.
-Childhood did not exist or was portrayed.
-The infanticide was reduced for the legitimate children, -
1400
The use of the child as a “toilet” for adult projections
It was very common during this time using the kid as a way of refecting the adult's projections and behavior. Besides that, it was belief that infants were felt to be on the verge of turning into totally evil beings is one of the reasons why they were tied up, or swaddled, so long and so tightly.
- Richard Allestree “the new-born babe is full of the stains and pollution of sin, which it inherits from our first parents through our loins " -
John Locke
Children were neither good or bad and their actions and education will determinate their life in the future -
XVII "Scare childres: A way to mold the behaviour"
During this, the children were scared and frightened with stories that included everything from religion and ghosts to mythical animals. This was done with the idea of being able to mold the character of children so that they could behave in a good way.
However, nowadays it was proved that this method was outdated because instead of accoplishment the purpose it was made for, it would lead to mental health dissorders such as schizophrenia .
(https://tinyurl.com/2pahrprb) -
Industrial revolution
The industrial revolution represent a massive change in the role of the children. This happen because with the development of new machines and factories the child role in doing physical labor changed into something new.
-The children role started being consolidated in the society -
Child in a "Double bind" of confliting signals
Here it is the child’s function to reduce the adult’s pressures, anxieties and worries making the kid acts as the adult’s defense. The adults demostrate that the child can be very bad and very loving by being rewarded and punished, treated good or bad "by his actions "
(https://www.mindkindmom.com/the-crazy-making-parenting-style-of-double-binds/) -
TOILET TRAINING, DISCIPLINE, AND SEX
Over the years, importance has been attached to teaching children to go to the bathroom. At first, children were given enemas, and purges in both health and illness. In turn, the excrement was seen as a way of understanding how the child was.Also, it was sought to teach children from an earlier age to go to the bathroom and for this ,drastic methods were used. Regarding sex, it was taboo to talk about it or related things. However, during this period, children were sexually abused. -
Rousseau
Rousseau contended that children were inherently innocent (not sinful, as Hobbes believed), weak, and easily tempted. He believed that humans were born pure until one's interactions with the environment caused negative effects on one's development. -
EARLY 19TH CENTURY
-The infancy started to be an important object of study
-Childhood became a matter not just for the family but for the state
-The abondonment of children decrease massively
-In the early 19th century when children worked in textile factories they often worked for more than 12 hours a day.
-Families were much larger than today. That was partly because infant mortality was high. People had many children and accepted that not all of them would survive.
-Churches provided schools for poor children -
The first effective law regarding the child labor
It was effective because for the first time factory inspectors were appointed to make sure the law was being obeyed. The new law banned children under 9 from working in textile factories. It said that children aged 9 to 13 must not work for more than 12 hours a day or 48 hours a week. Children aged 13 to 18 must not work for more than 69 hours a week. Furthermore, nobody under 18 was allowed to work at night Children aged 9 to 13 were to be given 2 hours of education a day. -
In 1842 a law Law banned children under 10 from working underground.
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Law banned children under 8 to work
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The state take responsibility for education
Forsters Education Act laid down that schools should be provided for all children. -
Mandatory school for children from 5 to 10 year old
School was made compulsory for 5 to 10-year-olds.
-School was not free except for the poor until 1891 -
LATE 19TH CENTURY
-Girls from upper-class families were taught by a governess. Boys were often sent to public schools like Eton.
-Middle-class boys went to grammar schools. Middle-class girls went to private schools where they were taught‘accomplishments’ such as music and sewing.
-Discipline in Victorian schools was savage.
-Before the 19th century children were always dressed like little adults. In Victorian times the first clothes made especially for children appeared such as sailor suits. -
EARLY 2OTH CENTURY
-Childhood is understood and the idea that the child knows better what he need or want than the parent was taked into account
-No discipline or habits were imposed to the kids
-The child needed help in order to achieve their goals -
20TH CENTURY
- There were romantic and Victorian efforts to improve and reinvent childhood upon similar movements of past centuries to solidify “The Child” as a figure of central importance to both the family and the nation. -The child's value shifted from economic to emotional, the gains of nineteenth-century reform encouraged many to anticipate further improvements in welfare and education.
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The Persistence of Child Labor
As Hugh Cunningham explains, people began to believe that “only state action could secure a childhood for all children,” and the child began to occupy a position “somewhere close to the center of the political agenda of the modern state”
- By 1900, nearly all Western countries had laws prohibiting or restricting child labor. Nevertheless, the United States census report from this year reveals that nearly two million childre was gainfully employed. -
The companionate family
-Yet even as family was coalescing into an affectionate, close-knit unit, social scientists and educators advocated that the child should be given “greater freedom from parental control, greater latitude in expressing their feelings, and increased interaction of adolescents with peers” -
Juveniles on Trial
Decreased in parental supervision was already causing anxiety about moral development. With most children attending school at least until sixteen, age-based grade levels defined stages of maturation. The law responded to the perceived threat of the “juvenile delinquent” by following education to expand the chronological definition of childhood according to age-based levels of accountability and punishment, depending on the crime. -
Children expressing their self
Parents and educators encouraged children to express their own individuality through creative play. At the same time, mechanization, improved in wartime, made toy production inventive, plentiful, and profitable. -
Freud's conception of child
Freud proposed that personality development in childhood takes place during five psychosexual stages, which are the oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages.
- During each stage sexual energy is expressed in different ways and through different parts of the body. -
Children nowadays- UNICEF
Children should be raised to be ready to face the world when they grow up. Furthermore, what defines a child depends on many factors in order to know the moment a child becomes an adult. We should also take into consideration the differences between societies when determining the age childhood ends. In the end, you cannot give children their rights, if there is no universal agreement on the word "child". Having a real understanding of the meaning of the word is the starting point.
