All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

by Jennifer Senior

Yet adults did not always take this indulgent view of children. Before the nineteenth century, they were distinctly unsentimental about them, regarding childhood “as a time of deficiency and incompleteness,” according to historian Steven Mintz. Rarely, he writes, did parents “refer to their children with nostalgia or fondness.” It was not uncommon for the New England colonists to call their newborns “it” or “the little stranger,” and no extra measures were taken to protect these little intruders from harm. “Children suffered burns from candles or open hearths, fell into rivers and wells, ingested poisons, broke bones, swallowed pins, and stuffed nutshells up their noses,” writes Mintz. Nor did grown-ups try to shield children from the more brutal emotional realities of life: “As early as possible, ministers admonished children to reflect on death, and their sermons contained graphic descriptions of hell and the horrors of eternal damnation.”