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16th century based on research compared to now . Ms. Brewer there was not as much distinction between childhood and adulthood. Not even close. Doldren had the capacity to a variety of things and marie and be responsible for things in a way we would not be today. For example, i found an example of a fiveyearold putting his mark at the bottom of an apprentice it contract a print and ship contract thatnticeship contract bound him to labor. Way there wasal not the same notion of what it what we take for granted now, that children had to have, people had to have meaningful consent to be bound. So childhood and adulthood, there was much more of a continuum and there is now. Life expectancy was what . Ms. Brewer about 40. It was changing rapidly at this point. Of people died before they reached their fifth birthday because of diseases, lack of vaccinations. Childhood diseases killed many more really Young Children. Once you are pastor fifth birthday, Life Expectancy was not bad after you passed your fifth birthday, Life Expectancy was not bad. Was there a difference in that in the colonies versus Great Britain . Ms. Brewer i would say not that much. One of the things that really shocked me and i was looking at the details of what was going on in the colonies in terms of legal norms was there was more in common between each colony i examined and britain because there were different colonies. There was one fundamental commonality, that Life Expectancy was shorter and the colonies, at least initially because conditions were so hard and the threat of diseases like malaria. If we looked at the British Parliament in the 16 60s and 16 70s, what would we have seen . Ms. Brewer a substantial version substantial portion of parliament that is younger than 21. Betweend be elected ages 12 and 21. Examples ofvorite this phenomenon being important is a man named christopher monk, age 13, open to the impeachment trial against the earl of clarendon. He was 13 years old and he opened the impeachment proceedings with a long speech. His father was pretty powerful. Was there difference in gender . Ms. Brewer yes and no. Certainly in terms of power. Not completely, there were queens who had power that was inherited. But certainly generally only men were allowed in the house of lords. You had a seat and that when you inherited the title, and that wouldve been at the average age of 21. But those were all men in the house of lords. So certainly in terms of power, there was a difference. But in terms of other legal capacity, the age limits were generally not as important for everybody, boy or girl. When a twoyearold girl marries a threeyearold boy, that is happening for both of them and in terms of criminal capacity, there was a fouryearold girl who was among the imprisoned who was charged with witchcraft in salem in 1692. She was just as culpable as an eightyearold boy named john who was charged with arson in england in 1629. So it was equal opportunity, both empowerment and disempowerment. If a child is responsible for their actions, i found an example of a sixmonthold child who was held responsible for killing herself by rolling into the fire when her parents had put her next to the fire to keep warm. That is in some way disempowerment. At six months. Ms. Brewer six months. If you were convicted of a crime, say you were eight years old, did they have Juvenile Court or were you considered an adult . Ms. Brewer no such thing as Juvenile Court. Even a, age was not category considered in terms of responsibility. He was not listed in routine court papers. But i it was not listed in routine court papers. But i found examples of two age nine and 11 who were charged with stealing a hat off someones head in london in the 16 90s on the court they could see from the girls hands that they had been convicted of crimes before because they had been burned for bike theft so they were determined to be old in crime but young in years and they were executed. Host how do . You research Something Like that . Youe do you go how do research Something Like that . Where do you go . Archives, state archives at courthouses, the british archives for years, pulling out old boxes and unfolding packets of court cases on the local and state level and the national level, trying to figure out the answer to the questions. Host at what point in terms of timing did the beliefs begin to change . I was also reading a lot of legal manuals. What you can tell from looking at the law books is changes went handinhand with transitions from a society where you are wherento a place into one government is made from the consent of the governed. This meant legal and political theorist began to argue. They came up with an argument about who should be able to consent. Obviously to go back to that fouryearold child, the boy signing his own labor contract, he does not understand what he is doing. If you allow really Young Children to consent, it becomes a justification for no real consent at all. So the pattern of the changes bigbe linked to two revolutions in england in the 17th century and the American Revolution and to the question of the consent of the governed is a central theme in all three. It becomes more clearly articulated. You can match the pattern to the civil war and American Revolution. Host was there public outcry from the parents, the mothers who saw what was happening to their Young Children . Somerewer there is outcry, mostly it comes, the most obvious cases are when children are kidnapped. It was not actually illegal in england to kidnap children. It was lightly punished when caught and authorities were not cracking down on it through most of the 17th century and into the 18th century. Some of the most obvious cases where i find parents protest is when children are sent on an errand and then kidnapped and sent to the colonies, for example. The lot of other categories, it is hard to protest. So many times when bad things happen to your children, the parents are also poor and have no means of protesting. If the person is from a wealthy family like christopher monk who i mentioned before, at age 17 he was having a rowdy party in and he had become and a policeman knocked on their door and told them to be more quiet and christopher and killed the policeman then went to his friend the king the next morning and the king pardoned him and it led to riots in the street. But he was fine. He did not need his parents to protest for him. But most of the time when a young child was executed or taken away to labor for someone else and their mark was put down, the parents in question might petition the court for some sort of change. I found examples, but there were not a lot of them, they did not have authority. Host i am hearing that in many cases the children were essentially slaves. They had contracts and to work until 25. They had not reached adulthood but were doing adult things. Ms. Brewer i think it can be compared to temporary slavery on. Ome level they wereertain way also born into status. Not as terrible as that as enslaved african and Indian Americans in the 19th century, but comparable in crucial ways. Looke other hand, if you at the court records, they had a few more privileges. Enslaved African Americans did not have the right to appeal for appeal to a court for abuse by a master. Did. White child usually if they were christian, they could swear an oath and say, my master is mistreating me, whatever. Slaves were legally silenced. Were you able to glean any research into the dynamics of the Family Circle . Yes, there is a ton of information about that. One of the most interesting , in as that i realized society where people were born to status and where land and power dissents from eldest son descends from eldest son to eldest son, the oldest son got everything, anduding most of the land ,he slaves attached to the land so all of the other children had to appeal to their older brother, even as adults, they were dependent on him for resources to give them land to farm or anything else. So this system where birth meant a hugentral range of hierarchy for everyone in society. I could talk more about parents if you want to. , fathersof parents definitely had more authority and they were huge debates over religious focusing on religion whether parents should beat their child to break their obedience, or whether each child had within them the light of god and that should be nurtured and brought out in a positive way. A lot of these differences went by religion. Quakers were focused on the light of god. Some puritans were more focused on breaking the will. But there was a lot of differentiation. Familyuld say within the fathers were clearly more powerful but in a fundamental way, what we would now call custody, that parents had the right to decide for their was something that emerged after the American Revolution, especially that the father has the right to make decisions, not the mother. D to transfer authority labor contracts. So the American Revolution was about the rights of human beings in certain ways, but especially about the rights of men and fathers having more authority of their children. It is conceptualized as in the best interest of the child but it is an interesting transformation. , whatwhen you teach this questions do you get from your students . You are going back to a very different part of america. Amazing, butt is they love this stuff. It is not that distant for them way, wein a certain have extended childhood so far, they are almost all still seen as children in the sense they are under 21 and they are not allowed to drink, for example. So to hear about the debates and struggle over what to find childhood and adulthood actually makes their own situation more understandable in this artificial way we have extended childhood. In other words, they are all shocked to realize the ways in which i mean, they are all so frustrated theyve been treated like children for so much longer. So they get really excited reading this material. Host why are you excited to research this particular area of history . Ms. Brewer what got me into it in the first place were classes in political theory where the early modern writers about democracy like john locke were talking about children constantly in their writings but none of the secondary sources dealt with it at all so i started asking, if children were the center and talked about continuously in modern political theory, what does it mean . I think we are interested in the questions about who can consent and who cannot and this has implications far beyond children in the way we think about the law. Who has the ability to have rights and who doesnt is definable by how we define who can reason and who cant. Disabled people, intellectually poorled, people who are and dependent on others, this gets to the core of a lot of distinctions we make an capacity in modern society. Titled, byook is birth or consent children, law, and the anglo American Revolution in authority. Holly brewer, thank you for being with us. Ms. Brewer you are welcome. Nice to meet you. Announcer next on the presidency, Abraham Lincoln revisitsarold holzer the second inaugural or addressed second inaugural address delivered six weeks before his assassination and generally considered to be one of the most iconic speeches in american history. The New York Historical society hosted the event. Welcomee honored to Harold Holzer back. He is the director of the roosevelt house policy institute at hunter college. He previously served as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln foundation and cochair of the u. S. Lincoln bicentennial commission, appointed by presidenll

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