Childhood

Parents and guardians in early North America loved and raised their children with the cultural values and skills required by their various societies. Because of high mortality rates, European colonists considered infancy a dangerous state to be endured, and babies were admired more for their progress toward adulthood than for their innate capabilities. Early marriages and large families were common, and members of extended families and kinship groups helped raise children when either the death of parents or forced separation disrupted nuclear families. Children were a crucial part of the labor force in this preindustrial agrarian economy. They began to contribute to the family welfare at a young age, whether belonging to Puritan or Chesapeake farm families, as members of Indian tribes, or when coerced into the workforce on slave plantations.

In 17th-century New England Puritan families were large, nuclear, and stable, characterized by early marriages and high birth rates. In contrast, in the mid-Atlantic region later marriages and shorter life expectancies created orphans and instability, resulting in more extended and stepfamilies. The family structure of white people in both regions converged during the 18th century. Euro-Americans believed that a parent’s duty was to ensure that babies grew straight and erect with the ability to speak, reason, and walk upright, which separated them from wild beasts. The use of swaddling bands and narrow cradles that inhibited movement, walking stools that held babies upright, and CLOTHING that gave the illusion of an adult posture indicate that infants were considered “innately depraved” and in need of shaping. Babies were thus hurried through infancy to physical independence.

Childhood ended at about age seven, when children were given household responsibilities and began lessons in religion and reading. Girls typically learned domestic skills from their mothers, and boys followed their fathers’ chores in this predominantly patriarchal world. Clothing indicated age and status—children of both GENDERs wore petticoats and caps until boys were considered mature enough to wear trousers. Most children were apprenticed out of the home at the age of 12 or 13. To “break the will” of uncooperative youngsters, PURITANS and other Europeans often used physical force in the 17th century. Corporal punishment declined in the later 18th century, when parents began to develop a view of childhood as a time of joy and innocence rather than of danger and depravity.

Slave children matured under the very difficult conditions of bondage. Slave owners sometimes hindered family formation, separating children and parents, and harshly punished young slaves. Still, AfRlCAN AMERICANS enjoyed some success in creating close family relationships. Following African kinship patterns, slaves formed extended family networks often comprised of friends who became “fictive” kin to raise orphans and maintain family bonds. Community “aunties” and “uncles” looked after girls and boys in the absence of other family members. Because slave owners envisioned infants as future workers, pregnant and nursing mothers usually received brief respite from field labor. Mothers carried babies on their backs into plantation fields, in the manner of their ancestors. At age six or seven some slave children began work as domestics while others began doing small chores around the farm. At nine or 10, most entered fieldwork. Some were apprenticed to skilled ARTISANS at age 14 or 15, also the age at which slaves (called “woman girl” and “man boy”) were most often sold.

Slave parents passed on a blended African and European culture, using religion, storytelling, MUSIC, and DANCE to create a sense of group identity. Masters usually forbade reading, but literate adults occasionally were able to educate girls and boys. Parents also taught children methods of resistance, from daily survival skills to acts of resistance and rebellion, as ways to cope with oppression. Runaway slave women very rarely left their children, often risking capture by taking them along.

Although Native American children grew up in diverse, autonomous tribes, some common themes of childhood emerge. Families were enmeshed in a network of extended family, clan, and tribal relationships. Unlike white children, Indian children often enjoyed close ties with numerous adults. Infants were valued as links to the supernatural world and were often nursed until the age of five. Parents used cradleboards, like the Euro-American swaddle method, to give security and create discipline in babies while they grew. Europeans were often astonished at the freedom that Indian parents afforded their offspring. Children learned skills required for membership in their adult society in the areas of survival, religion, and ethics through play, imitation, and storytelling. Spiritual quests for a personal “guardian spirit” were common rites of passage into adulthood. Informal apprentice relationships trained youth for storytelling and other leadership roles in the community. Adults educated children by using incentives, ridicule, fear of supernatural beings, and, rarely, physical punishment. Because pain tolerance was generally a cultural ideal, children were trained in physical endurance. As contact with Euro-Americans increased, deadly diseases, loss of land, and physical relocation required Native American parents to adapt their methods of child rearing to a changing world.

Further reading: Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992); Paula S. Fass and Mary Ann Mason, Childhood in America (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

—Deborah C. Taylor