-
Parents used to frighten children with stories so they would not misbehave or to scare them so the wouldn't misbehave.
This "tradition" can happen sometimes with families nowadays, but it isn't as common as before. -
People used to believe that the grandparents were reborn in babies. This fact relates to why in some languages the "Grandparent" (Babe, Baba) is close to the word "Baby".
Adults would suck the babies nipples and private parts according to this belief. -
Instead of killing their children, parents would leave their children physically or emotionally. This was really common when parents didn't want to take care of their kids.
-
In 374 A.D. the law began to consider killing an infant murder. Before this year, there was no law that found infanticide wrong in either Greece or Rome. -
Laws were created to limit sexual attacks where the teacher would abuse the children in schools
-
During the Middle Ages, the killing of legitimate children was slowly reduced. This was a regular practice, but new public opinions about this topic started to arise, causing a reduction of infanticide (with legitimate children). There was a large imbalance between males and females deaths because it was prefered to let a boy live than a girl.
-
In the Early Middle Ages, there was no term "Childhood". This absence reflected in the art of this time, because there wasn't portrays representing childhood.
-
Dateo of Milan founded the first asylum solely for abandoned infants and other countries then followed the same steps. This was the first step to find an alternative for those children. -
Children were allowed to enter into their parent's emotional life, but parents prevented their dangerous projections, by molding them into shape.
-
Between the XV and the XVI century, many cases showed how parents would give their child to the devil so they didn't have to take care of them.
-
In the Early Modern Period, the term "Childhood" was created.
It was defined with "the concept of the family which destroyed friendship and sociability and deprived children of freedom" -
This diary was the most complete record of childhood prior to modern times. The diary often allows us to glimpse the shifting double image, as his picture of the baby shifts between projective and reversal images. The double image represents being both an adult and a child.
-
It was a really common activity, where children were tied up, unable to move. This was really useful for parents because they would not have to look after the child so much.
Studies have shown how this is great for infants, since they become more passive and have better sleep hours. For these reasons, some parents still swaddle their children when they sleep. -
Children were considered to be a lover who would passionately embrace the mother. It was shown in paintings how children were the ones showing affection towards the mother, and not the other way around. There was a strong and dangerous relationship mother-child, because the closer they were, the bigger the burden on the growing child. -
Children were referred to be "Toilet" because as Richard Allestree (1676) said: " the new-born babe is full of the stains and pollution of sin, which it inherits from our first parents through our loins".
He also talked about that when babies cried (or didn't), it was related to the devil or committing a sin. -
Between this years, methods were implemented to prevent childhood masturbation like spreading rumors that doing it would cause different diseases. Then, they would punish children with different methods to stop them from doing it.
-
The relation between parent and child changed and increased the empathy between them and with the years swaddling was totally unnecessary.
-
The child was no longer so full of dangerous projections, the parents approached even closer and attempted to conquer its mind, in order to control its insides.
-
The double imagen represented how the child was seen as both full of the adult’s projected desires, hostilities, and sexual thoughts, and at the same moment as a mother or father figure. The first given illustration of this concept was with a four-year old boy named Nicolas and his family.
-
Before this time, it was uncommon that wealthy families raised their children, usually they were given to someone else till a specific age. -
Through the years the killing of illegitimate children started to reduce but before this there was a high incidence of infanticide in every country in Europe. -
Projection continue to reduce, and it wasn't anymore a process of conquering their will but training it, guiding them and socializing.
-
Both parents fully involve in this parenting method, accepting that the child knows better what they need in each stage of their life. Parents work to empathize with and fulfill the child expanding and particular needs.
-
Projective care starts as a projection of the parents’ own unconscious into the child. In the Apache tribe, when the psychoanalytic anthropologist L. Bryce Boyer visited them, he learned more about the care given to infants but their mothers. -
A comprehensive theory of historical change, specifically the “psychogenic” changes in personality occurring because of successive generations of parent-child interactions. -
Children's lives are often influenced by their environment, so it's not surprising that growing up now is different than it was two decades ago. Children now have less responsibilities than before, they are given their space, have much more freedom, usually are less supervised.
Every event that happened before, formed the term of "childhood" we know today.
