“Ye Heart of a Father”: Male Parenting in Colonial New England

Abstract

Loving fathers in colonial New England spoke in a “different voice.” They combined affection and power in the context of mutual familial obligation to raise their children to adulthood. What changed from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries was often expression rather than feeling. Men loved their children in both centuries, but the familiar language of sentiment emerged primarily at the end of the colonial period. Although these men parented in ways that we would judge harsh, they would find us equally repugnant in our permissiveness and disregard of religious training.