In Search of the Historical Child: Miniature Adulthood and Youth in Colonial New England

Abstract

those days?1 This question about an eighteenth-century portrait of four American children essentially states widespread scholarly and antiquarian view of children in colonial America. Not only is it assumed that colonial Americans treated their children differently than we do today, but it is also believed that they regarded their children and recognized no stage of development like twentieth-century adolescence. While this essay does not suggest that colonial Americans treated their children we treat ours, it does conclude that notions of and absence of adolescence in colonial New England are, at best, exaggerations. Much of myth of miniature adulthood stems from belief that children in colonial portraits appeared old and dressed like their parents. Until Revolution, writes Alice Morse Earle, as soon boy put on breeches he dressed precisely like his father-in miniature.2 According to Arthur M. Schlesinger, the older generation late Independence still displayed its basic assumption that children were miniature adults by continuing to dress young like little grownups.... The vital distinction between youth and age yet remained unrecognized.3 Monica Kiefer finds that eighteenth-century children occupied a submerged position in an adult