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Studies have shown children used to finger paint in the Paleolithic era and were clearly not marginalized as happened during later stages of history.
Source: https://youtu.be/dwPgnpC3PVs -
Swaddling was a common practice among parents as they had to pay little to no attention to their children once they were tied up.
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Where parents would kill their children to resolve their anxieties about taking care of them
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Adults finally saw children as having a soul and so they avoided projecting their own traumas and feelings onto their children by abandoning them either physically or emotionally.
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Until the fourth century, infanticide was neither illegal or thought of as a wrong thing to do. But in 374 A.D, killing an infant was finally considered murder. -
Children were allowed to enter the parents' emotional life, so the parents prevented their projections by “molding children into shape”, giving rise to parenting manuals.
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Portraits used to show the child as a passionate lover who would embrace their mother.
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Children were considered to be warriors captive in their mother's wombs, and warriors were glorified during this time. Furthermore, if a woman died in childbirth, she would be honored as a warrior who died in battle.
Source: https://youtu.be/dwPgnpC3PVs -
Giovani Dominici writes to warn people about the effects of exposing children to sexual images and acts, referring to “the ancients”, as he calls them, who saught to prevail a child’s innocence. -
The campaign against the sexual use of children continues, putting its focus on the behavior of adults towards children.
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Adults used to believe babies were full of sins inherited from their parents. Baptism used to include exorcism of the devil as even crying was considered a sin, and if the child cried too much, they could be considered a changeling and would be eventually killed. -
In the eighteenth century, a certain degree of empathy for children was recorded in writing. Prior to that, that kind of empathy was only shown toward either sleeping or dead children and living children were actually servants to their parents. -
Parents attempted to conquer the children’s minds and control them in every aspect of their existence. Threats and guilt were the preferred form of punishment.
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Children were punished for touching their own genitals, as people were against childhood masturbation, though, their main concern was actually adult homosexuality. In fact, to prevent children from masturbating, doctors began to spread the myth that it would cause insanity, epilepsy, blindness, and death.
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It is considered that Jean-Jacques Rosseau invented the modern concept of "Childhood" in the 18th century. Prior to this, children needed to be useful members of society, would be expected to get a job as soon they were able to walk, and would be barely tolerated until they could be considered adults.
Source: https://youtu.be/dwPgnpC3PVs -
Adults believed children should be purged before each nursing so the milk would not get mixed up with the feces. In addition, they also believed that the bowels of children harbored matter and that the excrement that was washed out of them meant they had an inner demon and was regarded as an insulting message to the adult world. As a result, children were given suppositories, enemas and oral purges.
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Parents sought to conquer a child’s will by teaching them to conform and guiding them into “proper paths”. Fathers begin to take more than an occasional interest in the child and help train them, even relieving the mother of some child-care chores.
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Parents and doctors were determined to put a stop to childhood masturbation, so they punished children through circumcision, clitoridectomy, and infibulation, along with restraint devices.
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Jean Paul Richter writes his book "Levana Oder Erziehlehre" where he condemned parents who "kept children in order by images of terror" as medical evidence showed it could lead to insanity. -
Parents understand that children know better than them what it needs at each stage. Parents stop disciplining them or trying to form certain habits within the child. This parenting mode involves both parents.
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The Convention on the Rights of the Child agreed on the following:
https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/convention-text-childrens-version
It is a long list but here are the higlights:
- No discrimination
- Respect for children's views
- Protection from violence
- Best health care possible
- Social and economic help
- Access to education
- Rest, play, culture, arts
- Protection from sexual abuse
- Protection in war
- Prevention of sale and trafficking
- Protection from harmful work