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Period: 20,000 BCE to 1400
Infant homicide for different reasons all around the world
"Children were thrown into rivers,..., “potted” in jars to starve to death,..., “a prey for birds, food for wild beasts to rend”."
"Any child that was not perfect in shape and size, or cried too little or too much, was generally killed."
"the first-born was usually allowed to live, especially if it was a boy." “If, as may well happen, you give birth to a child, if it is a boy let it live; if it is a girl, expose it." Taken from: Foundations of Psychohistory by Lloyd Demause. -
Period: 1800 BCE to
Abandonment (A), Nursing (N) and Swaddling (S)
A:"The most extreme and oldest form of abandonment is the outright sale of children,., legal in Babylonian times"
"The use of children as political hostages and security for debts."
N:"The baby sucks from the wet-nurse while the mother’s breasts are reserved for the viewer(the father)."
S:"Infants could turn into totally evil beings is one of the reasons why they were tied up."
"the baby has to be tied up or it will tear its ears off, scratch its eyes out, break its legs, or touch its genitals." -
374
Infanticide became a crime
The law started seeing Infanticide as a murder "Yet even the opposition to infanticide by the Church Fathers often seemed to be based more on their concern for the parent’s soul than with the child’s life." Taken from: Foundations of Psychohistory by Lloyd Demause. -
442
The abandonment of children had to be announced in the church
"After the Council of Vaison, the finding of abandoned children was supposed to be announced in church." -
Period: 600 to
Children were sexually abused
"The child in antiquity lived his earliest years in an atmosphere of sexual abuse. Growing up in Greece and Rome often included being used sexually by older men."
"The sexual abuse of boys was not limited to those over 11 or 12 years of age, as most scholars assume. Sexual abuse by pedagogues and teachers of smaller children may have been common throughout antiquity." -
787
Foundation of the first asylum for abandoned kids
Dateo of Milan was the first to found an asylum solely for abandoned infants. Other countries followed much the same pattern of evolution. -
Period: 801 to 1391
Femane infanticide was more common, out of the church records
"Despite much literary evidence, however, the continued existence of widespread infanticide in the Middle Ages is usually denied by medievalists, since it is not evident in church records and other quantitative sources. Sex ratio goes from 156 to 100 (c. 801 AD.) and 172 to 100 (1391 A.D.), showing that female children where more commonly killed" -
1405
Book of Giovanni Dominici
The author tried to set some limits to the convenient “innocence” of childhood. He was trying to reduce sexual abuse on children setting boundaries so kids wouldn't see sexual abuse as a normal practice -
Avoiding the use of the child as a “toilet”
Richard Allestree said “the new-born babe is full of the stains and pollution of sin, which it inherits from our first parents." -
Toilet training
"There was no evidence for toilet training in the earliest months of the infant’s life prior to the eighteenth century"
"By the nineteenth century, parents generally began toilet training in earnest in the earliest months of life."
"Even today, most English and German parents begin toilet training prior to six months; the average in America is more like nine months, and the range is greater" -
Period: to
From swaddling to beating
Parents needed a way to discipline their children. Earlier they used swaddling but it implicated a lot of effort and also had a lot of medical implications that weren't good for the children. So they started beating the kids to reprehend them. -
Projective and reversal Reactions Testimony
Nicholas tells a story of how he puts his hand on fire because his grandfather told him if he was willing to protect his mother he had to do it. Fragment: "“We shall see if you are telling the truth, for your mother is in great need of your little help! If you love her, you must prove it.” I made no answer; but, putting together all that had been said, I went to the fireplace and, while they were making signs to each other, put my right hand into the fire." -
Example of fear in kinds
As a nurse wanted to enjoy herself for the evening with the other servants while the parents of a two year old girl were out, she told the girl a story of a monster that would attack her if she came out of her room. -
Children rights
The United Nations creates the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that defines a child as "any human being below the age of eighteen years." Here is declared that children have the same rights every human being do, independent of their age.