2: Damned Infants

Set Reading

• Cotton Mather extracts from A Token for the Children of New England, or some examples of children, in whom the fear of God was remarkably budding, before they dyed.
• Anne Bradstreet, “The Four Ages of Man,” “In Reference to Her Children,”  “In Memory of Anne Bradstreet,” “On My Dear Grandchild,” extracts from “Meditations Divine and Moral,” and “To My Dear Children.”

Introduction

“The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused.” (De Mause 1)

Seminal historians of childhood from the 1960s and 70s, such as Lloyd de Mause and Phillipe Ariés, claimed a progressive movement in the history of childhood towards an increased social concern for the welfare of the child. The debate topic for this week asks you to consider this issue in the light of attitudes to corporal punishment.

In the United States, the Puritans, who were the culturally dominant Euro-American colonizers of British American “New England” in the seventeenth-century, often carry this reputation for being excessively repressive and uncaring in their child-rearing practices. Calvinist doctrine lay at the heart of American Puritanism, and a number of contradictory views on their attitude to children evolved as a result. Their writings for and about children can strike the modern reader as rather brutal in their emphasis on death, damnation and duty; and they have gained the reputation, particularly in the first phase of children’s literary studies, of regularly enforcing the rule “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” (See, for example, Illick in de Mause (ed), 303-350)]

To what extent is this uncaring/repressive attitude evident in this week’s texts? What do you think “discipline” meant for Mather and Bradstreet? What constitutes a “”child” in their writings? What is their attitude to children, to the family, or to “growing up”?

Your response to this topic can just focus on the Puritans, but you are also welcome to consider whether we continue to carry a legacy from this specific variant of the “Evil Child” that we briefly considered last week; thinking perhaps of whether this model of childhood still haunts debates on corporal punishment for children.

You might also want to look up the source of the adage “Spare The Rod and Spoil The Child”, which is often misattributed to The Bible; although it is in fact a variant on some statements in Proverbs (13:24, 19:18, 22:15, 23:13, 23:14, 29:15)

The Idea of “Infant Damnation”

Note: These frameworks are to be thought of as rudimentary starting points, and include some (highlighted) names and terms that you will need to look up if you are not already familiar with them. Some of these are supported by the timeline which offers a broader basic narrative of American history. This timeline has actually been designed for my second-year course so may have more information than you strictly need. However, it would be useful for you to get an overall view of American history for this unit.]

“Infant Damnation” was a tenet of the protestant theologian John Calvin (1509-1564). He believed that all children were born into “Original Sin,” and only those who were also born as God’s “elect” people would be granted salvation. The basis for the doctrine lay in his belief in predestination. Roman Catholic doctrine, on the contrary, had argued that good works (i.e. charity), confession and divine forgiveness in this life would ensure a place in the next.

In a treatise on “Eternal Predestination” of 1553 Calvin had argued (against one of his Roman Catholic critics):

“But if original sin and guilt are not, in the estimation of  [Albertus] Pighius, sufficient to condemn men eternally, and if the secret judgment of God can have no place with him, what will he make of the case of infant children who are taken out of this life before they could possibly have performed any of the works of charity above alluded to? Now there was the same natural condition of birth and of death both in those infants who died in Sodom and in those who died in Jerusalem, and their works, or rather no works, were precisely the same. How is it, then, that Christ will separate in the last day the one from the other, placing the one on His right hand and the other on His left? Who does not here adore the glorious judgment of God, who ordained that the one part of these children should be born at Jerusalem, whence, through the knowledge of the truth they might afterwards be translated to a better life, while the others should be born in that wide entrance into hell, Sodom? As therefore I hold, in truth, that Christ will in the last day recompense unto the elect the reward of righteousness, so I by no means speak falsely when I assert that the reprobate will in that day pay the punishment of their unrighteousness and of all their iniquities. (Calvin n.page)

More recently, critics and historians have questioned this Puritan reputation, citing evidence of a significant gap between doctrine and everyday practice. Evidently, Puritans did value a sense of piety, obedience, and duty in their children (which might, after all, confirm to parents that their offspring were included amongst the “elect”), and they certainly did believe in corporal punishment for children; but they also placed considerable emphasis on communal and parental responsibility for good child-rearing practice, and held education and learning in particular esteem. Indeed, Cotton Mather – one of the most notorious figures in the Salem Witch Trials – also wrote one of the earliest “parenting guides” in which he urged parents to “[l]et not your Authority bestrained with such Harshness and Fierceness, as may discourage your Children. To treat our Children like Slaves, and with such Rigour, that they shall always Tremble and Abhor to come into our presence, This will be very unlike to our Heavenly Father.” (The Duties of Parents to Their Children” e-text) In addition, infant morality remained high, and many works from this era describe a deep anxiety for the welfare – and spiritual destiny – of dead or dying children.

The section in Mather’s Token for Chldren that best suggests this principle of infant damnation is Example VI, “Elizabeth Butcher”, particularly in section II when she asks “what is sanctification?”

Further Reading

Avery, Gillian, Behold the Child: American Children and Their Books, 1621-1922, London: Bodley, 1994. A good, clear general introduction to children’s literature in America useful for the course overall [Main Library & St Luke’s]

Illick, Joseph E, “Child-Rearing in Seventeenth-Century England and America,” in Lloyd De Mause, The History of Childhood, London: Souvenir Press (e&a) Ltd, 1976. A seminal early collection on the history of childhood that, overall, pursues the kind of progressive claim that children were treated worse in the past than they are now, which more recent critics such as Mintz have critiqued. [Main Library and St Luke’s]

Cotton Mather extracts from A Token for the Children of New England, or some examples of children, in whom the fear of God was remarkably budding, before they dyed. (1699) [Full text, including James Janeway’s original On Line]

Mather, Cotton, “The Duties of Parents to Their Children” e-text.

Calvin, John, “Eternal Predestination” E-text (Biblical allusions are to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis:19, and King Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents” Mathew 2: 13-23.)

See also, Research Resources for further texts and library sections on Puritanism and childhood.