Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on contributors
- Anthony Fletcher
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Marriage, separation and the common law in England, 1540–1660
- 3 Republican reformation: Family, community and the state in Interregnum Middlesex, 1649–60
- 4 Keeping it in the family: Crime and the early modern household
- 5 Faces in the crowd: Gender and age in the early modern English crowd
- 6 ‘Without the cry of any neighbours’: A Cumbrian family and the poor law authorities, c.1690–1730
- 7 Childless men in early modern England
- 8 Aristocratic women and ideas of family in the early eighteenth century
- 9 Reassessing parenting in eighteenth-century England
- Select bibliography
- Index
9 - Reassessing parenting in eighteenth-century England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on contributors
- Anthony Fletcher
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Marriage, separation and the common law in England, 1540–1660
- 3 Republican reformation: Family, community and the state in Interregnum Middlesex, 1649–60
- 4 Keeping it in the family: Crime and the early modern household
- 5 Faces in the crowd: Gender and age in the early modern English crowd
- 6 ‘Without the cry of any neighbours’: A Cumbrian family and the poor law authorities, c.1690–1730
- 7 Childless men in early modern England
- 8 Aristocratic women and ideas of family in the early eighteenth century
- 9 Reassessing parenting in eighteenth-century England
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
The last thirty years of scholarship on parent–child relationships in England have been shaped by Lawrence Stone's narrative of evolution in family life. He identified three successive family types between 1500 and 1800, in which parents' emotional attitudes towards their children played a central role in distinguishing the different stages from one another, changing over time from indifference to devotion. Stone's broader thesis has been dismantled, with patriarchy, courtship, married life, kinship, and relationships between parents and offspring coming under close scrutiny. ‘Revisionists’ attacked Stone's problematic and limited use of sources and demolished his chronological thesis by showing that the early modern family was as affectionate as its eighteenth-century successor. The debate has entered a ‘post-revisionist’ phase in the last decade, shaped by gender, the inter-active relationship between cultural forces and everyday life, and the influence of both material and emotional factors on people's actions, and also by the attempt to uncover historical subjects' agency and dismantle simplistic concepts such as public and private.
Parent–child relationships, however, have still not moved beyond the revisionist phase. Though many aspects of childhood studies have developed in sophisticated and stimulating ways, research into parenting has continued to ‘measure’ the degree of parental affection and emotional intimacy through the same key milestones: pregnancy and childbirth (including infanticide and abandonment); infant-care practices; discipline; child-independence (training and education); marriage-making; and finally death.
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- The Family in Early Modern England , pp. 209 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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