Death and the Puritan Child

Abstract

FROM TIME TO TIME IN THE HISTORY OF MAN A NEW IDEA OR WAY OF LOOKing at things bursts into view with such force that it virtually sets the terms for all relevant subsequent discussion. The Copernican, Darwinian and Freudian revolutions-perhaps, as Freud on occasion noted, the three most destructive blows which human narcissism has had to endure are among the extreme examples of such intellectual explosions. Others have been of considerably more limited influence: the concept of culture in anthropology is one example, the frontier thesis as an explanatory device for American history is another. At still another level is the seminal study of a particular problem. An instance of this is the fact that throughout the past decade historians of family life have conducted their research in the shadow of Philippe Aries' monumental study, Centuries of Childhood, a work that established much of the currently conventional wisdom on the subject of the family in history. One of Aries' most original and influential findings was that childhood as we know it today did not exist until the early modern period. In medieval society, he observed, ... as soon as the child could live without the constant solicitude of his mother, his nanny or his cradle-rocker, he belonged to adult society.' It was not until the 16th and 17th centuries, and then only among the upper classes, that the modern idea of childhood as a distinct phase of life began to emerge. The picture Aries sketched, drawing on such diverse sources as portraiture, literature, games and dress, was predominantly one of French culture and society; but it was clear that he felt his generalizations held true for most of the Western world. Recent studies in colonial New England have supported Aries' assumption of the representativeness of his French