HIST 1080 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Tabula Rasa, Calvinism, Puritans

• School: York University
• Department: History
• Course: HIST 1080
• Professor: Molly Ladd- Taylor

Document Summary

~ hist 1080 growing up in north america ~ * family relations, gender and the middle-class child * Uses letters to get out feelings about family relationships. Girls and boys had really diverse differences while growing up. Changing ideas about children"s nature (17th 19th centuries): Calvinists (puritans): original sin/ will - breaking. John locke mentioned that a child"s mind is like a tabula rasa. Rousseau: had a romantic idea of original perfect nature of the child. Family relations, gender and the middle class child: Childhood (boyhood and girlhood) as a social construction. Difference and sameness in children"s lives: especially through gender and class. The rise of the middle class, circa 1750 1880. Ideal home = not seen as a locus of economic production (making of cloth, candles, food etc. Ideal of protected or sheltered childhood: this is not how the children of the 19th century lived. The image of the ideal is tranquil.