The Wild Children of Yesteryear kids were not biblical

[doggie]

this is pretty intestine how kids were way back when. not so sparkling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opini ... inion&_r=5

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,†as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.â€

This was not a “carefree†nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead†boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries.

Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,†liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality†was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.â€

Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.

The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.†Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,†whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.

[FloraKitty35]

this is pretty intestine how kids were way back when. not so sparkling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opini ... inion&_r=5

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,†as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.â€

This was not a “carefree†nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead†boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries.

Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,†liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality†was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.â€

Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.

The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.†Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,†whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.

Interesting article, I shared it on Twitter.

[Coco]

Wow.

So... my kids are more historically American than QF kids? :evil laugh: My kids are definitely 'liberated from old hierarchies.' :twisted:

But it's true, have you seen the Little Rascals movies? It always seemed like they were out doing really dangerous stuff and no parents in sight. I can barely watch them. And of course kids in the '30's were going to these Little Rascals matinees BY THEMSELVES!

And for the stoning bit... reminds me of a few scenes in the Old Yeller books :lol:

[doggie]

Here is the rest if the link dies not work.

Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.

The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.†Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,†whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.

And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg†— a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.

Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture†offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.

But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.

Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.

So how did we get from “democratic sucklings†to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.

Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.

Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.â€

There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.

“Precocious†19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.

Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.

There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.†It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.†Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.

[Coco]

Sorry, it does work now :D user error! Very interesting article.

[Fun-Dee]

Wow.

So... my kids are more historically American than QF kids? :evil laugh: My kids are definitely 'liberated from old hierarchies.' :twisted:

But it's true, have you seen the Little Rascals movies? It always seemed like they were out doing really dangerous stuff and no parents in sight. I can barely watch them. And of course kids in the '30's were going to these Little Rascals matinees BY THEMSELVES!

And for the stoning bit... reminds me of a few scenes in the Old Yeller books :lol:

My mother told me that when my older brothers were little, it was very common to send your kids to the movies alone. One day, when they were around 5 and 9, she sent them off to the movies as usual. When they came back she found out that they had seen Psycho! My mom said that it never occurred to her that they would see an inappropriate movie.

[Hane]

I remember when a bunch of us neighborhood kids decided to go visit my kindergarten teacher who lived about half a mile away from my home. This was in 1957. The trip was instigated by my friend's big sister, who was in first grade. My friend and I were in kindergarten, and the rest of the gang was even younger. We all got to our destination and back in one piece. God knows how Mary knew where Miss Heike lived!

[Coco]

My mother told me that when my older brothers were little, it was very common to send your kids to the movies alone. One day, when they were around 5 and 9, she sent them off to the movies as usual. When they came back she found out that they had seen Psycho! My mom said that it never occurred to her that they would see an inappropriate movie.

Ha! That sounds like a couple of boys. I'm surprised that the theater staff let them go in that one. But maybe they snuck in. :D

I remember when a bunch of us neighborhood kids decided to go visit my kindergarten teacher who lived about half a mile away from my home. This was in 1957. The trip was instigated by my friend's big sister, who was in first grade. My friend and I were in kindergarten, and the rest of the gang was even younger. We all got to our destination and back in one piece. God knows how Mary knew where Miss Heike lived!

That is so sweet! Probably made the teacher's day lol Parents could trust just about anyone back then. That's why I love to read kids books from the '50s to my kids. (Beverly Cleary, esp.) Life certainly wasn't perfect but at least parents could relax a little bit.

[Mama Mia]

Ha! That sounds like a couple of boys. I'm surprised that the theater staff let them go in that one. But maybe they snuck in. :D

That is so sweet! Probably made the teacher's day lol Parents could trust just about anyone back then. That's why I love to read kids books from the '50s to my kids. (Beverly Cleary, esp.) Life certainly wasn't perfect but at least parents could relax a little bit.

If you look at the statistics it isn't that there is some huge increase in crime or dangers to children, it's that parents now are much more aware of every single thing that can go wrong that occurs anywhere. Seeing stories of kidnapped and lost children on a constant tv and Internet news cycle instead of only large national stories being shown on the once daily news and only knowing about a kidnapped / hurt child if it happened locally is the main difference.

[Rebelwife]

I'm pretty free with my kids, more so than most parents I know. The only thing I really hover over is sunscreen. (The perils of fair skinned children in Florida. :lol: ) Some of my friends were horrified that I let my 3rd grader ride her bike home from school and let herself in until I got home with her older sister 20 minutes later. Seriously? We live in a very safe neighborhood with sidewalks, had the best crossing guard EVER to get her across the one street that would have traffic and it was less than 1/2 mile. Not to mention the fact that we probably knew 20 people between the school and our house if she did need help.

I say let 'em roam - especially in this day of cell phones where it's easy enough to track them down.

However, I am much more of a helicopter parent with electronics. The line in our house is that if you want to keep something totally private, write it in a journal and stick it under your mattress. I'll respect that, but they have zero expectation of electronic privacy. We have to have all passwords, we follow their instagram accounts and we monitor what they're doing pretty closely.

[FJSharkJump]

Ha! That sounds like a couple of boys. I'm surprised that the theater staff let them go in that one. But maybe they snuck in. :D

That is so sweet! Probably made the teacher's day lol Parents could trust just about anyone back then. That's why I love to read kids books from the '50s to my kids. (Beverly Cleary, esp.) Life certainly wasn't perfect but at least parents could relax a little bit.

Nah, parents believed they could trust just about anyone. All the stories that we will never hear: That nice neighbor who diddled the kids who stopped by his garage for a popsicle. Or that older lady down the road who would cheerfully agree to watch your kids in a pinch but beat them with a hair brush if they so much as whispered during her stories. Or the teacher who would bully, degrade and abuse the kids they just didn't like.

This doesn't even get into the bullying dynamics of a toxic gang-like hierarchy of unsupervised children running nearly amok.

There are a lot of people who wish their parents had not been so naive and relaxed.

[Coco]

that's true, i guess things never change much.

[lilith]

I've had other parents complain to my kids school cause my then 9, 8 and 6 year old walked to and from school without an adult - a walk that is along our long street (no roads to cross) then across the crossing near the school that is manned by a crossing guard.

But I also had other parents applaud it and say it gave them the confidence to let their kids walk (they were worried about judgement from other parents, not that their kids would be unsafe) and now my kids start alone at the bottom of our street in the morning but by the time they get to the top they have been joined by about a dozen other kids of all ages. Safer for everyone, especially as they now know the homes where other kids live and know they can go there in an emergency.

People talk about the obesity crisis in kids, but if they aren't allowed to walk/play/ride bikes/skateboards etc round their neighbourhood then how are they meant to exercise?

I try very hard to be home by the time my kids are, but occasionally my 10 year old will have to let herself and her brothers in and be in charge for an hour. When I was a kid that was relatively common (but usually for more than an hour), but it's something I don't even like to admit now cause of the hail of judgement I feel I'll receive. But my kids have a confidence in their own practical abilities that's not common in their generation.

I'm not advocating for the roaming packs of unsupervised kids terrorising stray animals, but we really need to let our kids grow into responsibility and independence, not shelter them completely then expect them to suddenly be able to negotiate the world as teens or young adults.

[16strong]

The knife-throwing game reminds me of a game me and the neighborhood kids played when we were young: We would all stand in a circle and then whoever's turn it was would find the biggest rock they could lift and throw it as close to the person opposite them as possible without hitting them. Also, we stood in a shallow creek while doing it, so a large splash was an added bonus. :lol:

[browngrl]

I can understand giving children some freedom and I can understand the benefit of play but the whole "“always stoning something,†whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets." sounds sick to me.

I realize the point of this post was to highlight how different America of the past was compared to what fundies think. Even so, anytime where stoning the weak is just good clean fun sound terrible to me.

[Marianne]

There is a myth who say that before, everything was perfect : obedient children, loving but firm adults, excellent teachers, full of craftsmen doing their jobs, church full of people, peace, harmony, tranquility, "labour, family, fatherland"*...

STOOOOOOOOOOOP!

Insecurity, violence, theft, murder, rape, ignorance, have ALWAYS existed. And will always exist. Of course, I do not say that I love these things, but we must stop idealizing the past and be "oh, how I would love to live in the 50s, when there was no unemployment, everything was so beautiful and harmonious !" In the 50s, there was poverty, rape, robbery, murder, racism, the death penalty, no vaccine, children who die from diseases that can be heal today, crime ....

*"labour, family, fatherland", was the new devise of France after Pétain had received full powers (the old was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"). Pétain, a facist, leads a "National Revolution" that most fundies will love : corporatism, rejection of modernism, policy of return to the earth,traditional values, and persecution of Gypsies, socialists & communists, Jews, homosexuals ... That's your dream, no, Josh Duggar ?

[debrand]

Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation.

I will look up the statistics but youth crime and pregnancy have been dropping for several years. Also, I am pretty certain that we are not as litigious a country as some on the right like to think. Considering that until the middle part of the last century, the south still had segregation, I see even less to admire.

If lack of supervision provides the opportunity for your child to form gangs to harass minorities and hurt store animals, I don't see anything positive to emulate. It also said that girls as young as 8 had to work alongside their mothers but boys had the freedom to roam.

Some parents are too protective and kids should be allowed more freedom to explore and discover who they are as individuals but I really hope that we don't go back to the parenting depicted in the article.

My grandmother was born in 1919 and she said that other adults could spank children that weren't related to them. Nope. No one better touch my child.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Interesting theory. I hadn't thought about a possible link to political views in early America.

I wonder if child rearing was different among United Empire Loyalists (those in North America that remained loyal to the British Crown, and fled to Canada during the American Revolution)? They would have had the same basic culture and same experience of being pioneers, but not the republican politics.

I know that political ideals played a role in the notoriously free-range style of Israeli parenting. The focus on creating a society that was tough and free trickled down to kids in a big way. You also had a big dose of communal values - some of the early socialist pioneers went so far as to see all child rearing as the responsibility of the community, not the individual family, and you'd often have a "children's house" on a kibbutz where children lived, day and night. Kids are also raised to have a certain amount of attitude, and there's no desire to raise quiet kids who are obedient to authority. A lot of that has to do with a society that glorifies tales of resistance and survival, and that sees obedience to authority as leading to gas chambers.

[Geechee Girl]

Interesting theory. I hadn't thought about a possible link to political views in early America.

I wonder if child rearing was different among United Empire Loyalists (those in North America that remained loyal to the British Crown, and fled to Canada during the American Revolution)? They would have had the same basic culture and same experience of being pioneers, but not the republican politics.

I know that political ideals played a role in the notoriously free-range style of Israeli parenting. The focus on creating a society that was tough and free trickled down to kids in a big way. You also had a big dose of communal values - some of the early socialist pioneers went so far as to see all child rearing as the responsibility of the community, not the individual family, and you'd often have a "children's house" on a kibbutz where children lived, day and night. Kids are also raised to have a certain amount of attitude, and there's no desire to raise quiet kids who are obedient to authority. A lot of that has to do with a society that glorifies tales of resistance and survival, and that sees obedience to authority as leading to gas chambers.

That's a very insightful perspective. My own community shared some of those same qualities. In my youth, we could be expected to be disciplined by any adult member of the community. It wasn't until I moved away that I learn it was not okay to scold another's child.

[Coco]

That's a very insightful perspective. My own community shared some of those same qualities. In my youth, we could be expected to be disciplined by any adult member of the community. It wasn't until I moved away that I learn it was not okay to scold another's child.

Tell that to Debi Pearl :angry-banghead:

[Coco]

Amazing how recent all of this history is, actually... no wonder those kids were still wild in the late 1800's, if they heard stories from their grandads about American independence. In the 1800's people would have remembered the Revolution very well; it wasn't over until 1783.

We remember things even as far back as WWI pretty well, right? That would be about the same time frame.

Off-topic but the last Civil War widow died in 2003, and she had a son with the CW vet who was still alive in 2003. (After her veteran husband died she married his grandson but that's another story lol) Source: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3765811.stm

Sorry for the off-topic i love history!

[lawlifelgbt]

While some supervision may be good, I don't think that parents should never let their kids out of their sight, either.

My mom was a helicopter in other ways, but I have to credit allowing independence from a young age. The school where she taught was three blocks from my elementary school, so by the time I was in 3rd grade and my brother was in kindergarten, we'd walk to my mom's school (they got out later, and she wanted to keep an eye on us), by ourselves. We also always walked to elementary school a block from home every day, and to the library two blocks away by ourselves since we were about 8.

Around the time my brother was 6 and I was 8, we were allowed to go into town when my family was on summer break in the town on Lake Superior where we sail (about 600 people, one main street, we'd shared a marina with the same people for decades and the locals knew us). We would walk around a 4-6 block area, and go to the park or buy ice cream or candy on our own. Until my brother was 8, he would have to come with me if he wanted to go. After that, we could go on our own, but had to wear watches and be back by a set time. Sometimes we also had to take walkie-talkies.

This encouraged the other parents who sailed out of the same place to allow their kids to be on their own more. One of my favorite memories is getting about 8 kids together from four families, then going individually to each set of parents to ask for money to go to the store. As we asked, we pretended we hadn't gotten any money or asked the others, and promised to share however little we'd buy. We got about $20. Of course, we later got caught, but still, good times.