Frost, J. William

English

Works

 Swarthmore College
Works 
 
 
Religion Faculty Works 
 
 
4-1-1975 
 
Review Of "The History Of Childhood" 
Edited By L. DeMause 
 
J. William Frost 
Swarthmore College  
 
Let us know how access to this work benefits you. 
 
Follow this and additional works at: http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-religion  
 Part of the Religion Commons 
 
 
Recommended Citation 
J. William Frost. (1975). "Review Of "The History Of Childhood" Edited By L. DeMause". Pennsylvania 
Magazine Of History And Biography. Volume 99, Issue 2. 244-246. 
http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-religion/116 
 
This work is brought to you for free and open access by the Swarthmore College Libraries. It has 
been accepted for inclusion in Religion Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For 
more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. 
 
 
Review
Reviewed Work(s): The History of Childhood by Lloyd de Mause
Review by: J. William Frost
Source: The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Apr., 1975),
pp. 244-246
Published by: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20090949
Accessed: 16-05-2017 20:51 UTC
 
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The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
This content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTC
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BOOK REVIEWS April 
fits of his own female parishioners at Sunday services. Probably he felt 
vulnerable, for his sermons were just of the type most deprecated by the 
revivalists: cold, emotionless, read verbatim, and often rehashed from 
earlier efforts. Indeed, church members accused him of delivering "old 
sermons," a sin frequently on his own conscience, but excused on the 
grounds of pressures of parish and family duties. Regardless of his preach-
ing style, he reaped a steady harvest of new church members during the 
years of the Great Awakening, meanwhile lamenting the loss of others to 
the Separates and even the Anglicans. 
Francis G. Walett, Parkman's editor, has produced a diary of incredible 
richness and variety, well calculated to appeal to the student of colonial 
New England. His main task, as he explains in his introduction, was to 
identify the hundreds of individuals included within the pages of the 
work. Even with such a large cast to consider, however, it seems unneces-
sary to identify the same obscure persons repeatedly. One wishes also that 
more of the footnotes went beyond mere identification. Nevertheless, the 
editor's comprehensive introduction furnishes a useful overview of a long, 
varied, and complex life. The reader will doubtlessly be inconvenienced 
by the minute type in the text and miniscule footnotes, but one feels 
certain that this format was imposed by the budgetary necessities of such 
a massive work, and not by design of the editor. 
Some people may have been fortunate enough to have read the Diary as 
it was serialized earlier in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian 
Society and elsewhere. For the unlucky ones, there may be a sense of 
loss upon completing the first installment. So many questions remain un-
answered. Will Parkman ever receive a liveable salary? Will his son, 
Ebenezer, Jr., finally obtain a farm of his own? Will the Parkmans, unlike 
their neighbors, continue to escape the ravages of smallpox and the throat 
distemper? Perhaps we shall learn in time, but as Ebenezer Parkman ob-
served, "We must now wait the Will of God in what is to follow." 
Frostburg State College GORDON E. KERSHAW 
The History of Childhood. Edited by LLOYD DE MAuSE. (New York: 
Psychohistory Press, 1974. iv, 450 p. Index. Hardcover, $12.50; 
paperback by Harper & Row, $3.95.) 
This important book is both provocative and disquieting. It should 
prove useful because of the quantity of information and for providing 
examples which can be used to test the validity of psychoanalytic history. 
These essays will force historians to reconsider traditional methods of 
study and should stimulate further research. Lloyd de Mause deserves 
our commendation for creating this project and for finding scholars willing 
to cull through extensive amounts of materials to extract information on 
This content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
1975 BOOK REVIEWS 
childhood from Rome until the nineteenth century. The book establishes 
that children have a history susceptible to investigation. 
In the introductory essay, de Mause provides a conceptual framework 
in which the treatment of children appears as a "nightmare" from which 
we are only beginning to emerge. There is a comforting fillip in his thesis, 
for he finds progress from barbarism until the present and believes that 
modern man has the emotional maturity to treat an infant in terms of 
its own needs rather than those of adults. de Mause argues that historians 
have focused on the superstructure of economics, politics, or war, but have 
ignored the key to understanding the development of western civilization 
found in child-rearing practices. Not all the other contributors to this 
book share the editor's views, or-at least-some are extremely cautious 
about using psychoanalytic techniques to interpret their data. A reader 
gains a sense of perspective on customs in different periods because all 
authors focus on infanticide, nursing, health, discipline and views of 
innocence or depravity of children. The danger in the psychoanalytic 
approach to the history of childhood is that the evidence is elusive and 
the parents not alive to discuss or put into context their beliefs. Even if 
they could speak, the circular nature of psychoanalytic theory would 
preclude an effective rebuttal. 
The essays by Joseph Illick on seventeenth-century England and 
America and John Walzer on eighteenth-century America are the contribu-
tions dealing with the United States. There are faults in both which make 
their primary value factual information rather than interpretation. Illick's 
essay contains thought provoking but unsupported generalizations. On 
page 308 putting the child out to a wet nurse "was a practice engaged in 
by most of those who could afford it," but two pages later only the "upper 
class" employ wet nurses; yet the documentary evidence for either state-
ment is scanty. Illick asserts but does not prove that seventeenth-century 
Englishmen tended to be secularists while their wives were devout. He 
assumes that because they migrated the settlers of colonial America were 
engaged in adolescent dreams of escape and were less mature individuals 
than the Englishmen who stayed at home. In Illick's hands psychoanalysis 
becomes a way of simplification. The doctrine of "calling" is related to the 
sublimation of sex; Puritans wrote death narratives of their children 
because they subconsciously wanted them dead. The same careless use of 
material mars the Walzer article. For example, that Americans sent their 
children to school at an early age and apprenticed youth is used to show 
a parental desire to be rid of them. Yet, since New Englanders built schools 
in most towns and most American youth were not apprenticed, these 
phenomena could equally show that Americans were possessive of chil-
dren. Since Walzer sees the eighteenth century as a period of ambivalence 
in which parents projected away and held onto the youth, he can find 
evidence to support his thesis. After all, it is hard to think of an action 
by a parent which could not fit into these categories. The central difficulty 
This content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
The Fur Trade in Colonial New York, I686-I776. By THOMAS ELLIOT 
NoRTON. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, i974. x, 243 p. 
Bibliographical note, index. $I2.50.) 
The fur trade was the economic base for the Dutch colony of New 
Netherland, with a trading company as its colonizing agent. Fort Orange 
(Albany), up the Hudson River, was ideally situated to tap the resources 
of the interior and to carry on trade with the adjacent Iroquois. Hence 
the Dutch settlers there had a single purpose which they carried over into 
the period of English rule. For the locality it was a monopoly, and these 
factors gave New York a distinct advantage over other colonies in this 
lucrative trade. The fur trade, however, depended upon relations with the 
Indians who trapped and hunted and then traded their peltry. The Wars 
of the Iroquois by George T. Hunt pointed out how these Indians fought 
for the areas producing beaver, and by their conquests over other tribes 
controlled the trade, while the supply of beaver declined in the East. The 
Albany Dutch traders not only profited by the trade from the lakes and 
the West and from the Mohawk; they also reached out for some of the 
French furs coming down from the North via Lake Champlain. No other 
colony could match these advantages, and the fur trade of New York was 
the largest part of that of the English colonies. 
Since the Dutch traders in New York had this monopoly, they became 
the people chiefly concerned with Indian relations and were named New 
York's Indian commissioners. Things went smoothly until the colonial 
wars and hostilities with the French produced a conflict of interest. The 
Dutch traders still pursued an active trade with Montreal, receiving furs 
from the northward and supplying the Canadians with Indian trade 
goods. Others conceived this as trading with the enemy and gave the Albany 
Dutch a bad name. Subsequently laws were passed prohibiting the traffic, 
but it was too well established to be given up, and continued as smuggling. 
The author of this excellent study of the New York fur trade believes 
BOOK REVIEWS April 
with these two essays is the subjective use of evidence to fit the canons 
of psychoanalytic theory. A distorting ray sometimes provides an illumi-
nating perspective, but here it serves too often to blind. This is a pity 
because Illick makes good use of midwife books, John Locke's writings, 
and a variety of sources in England and America, and Walzer correctly 
charts the many changes in the treatment of children which occurred in 
the eighteenth century. Fortunately, the essays of Mary McLaughlin, 
J. B. Ross, and Elizabeth Marwick are excellent and provide examples of 
how insights derived from psychology can aid history. 
Friends Historical Library J. WILLIAM FROST 
Swarthmore College 


Review Of  The History Of Childhood  Edited By L. DeMause

 Swarthmore CollegeWorks   Religion Faculty Works   4-1-1975  Review Of "The History Of Childhood" Edited By L. DeMause  J. William Frost Swarthmore College   Let us know how access to this work benefits you.  Follow this and additional works at: http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-religion   Part of the Religion Commons   Recommended Citation J. William Frost. (1975). "Review Of "The History Of Childhood" Edited By L. DeMause". Pennsylvania Magazine Of History And Biography. Volume 99, Issue 2. 244-246. http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-religion/116  This work is brought to you for free and open access by the Swarthmore College Libraries. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religion Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu.   ReviewReviewed Work(s): The History of Childhood by Lloyd de MauseReview by: J. William FrostSource: The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Apr., 1975),pp. 244-246Published by: The Historical Society of PennsylvaniaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20090949Accessed: 16-05-2017 20:51 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusteddigital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information aboutJSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://about.jstor.org/termsThe Historical Society of Pennsylvania is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and BiographyThis content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/termsThis content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/termsBOOK REVIEWS April fits of his own female parishioners at Sunday services. Probably he felt vulnerable, for his sermons were just of the type most deprecated by the revivalists: cold, emotionless, read verbatim, and often rehashed from earlier efforts. Indeed, church members accused him of delivering "old sermons," a sin frequently on his own conscience, but excused on the grounds of pressures of parish and family duties. Regardless of his preach-ing style, he reaped a steady harvest of new church members during the years of the Great Awakening, meanwhile lamenting the loss of others to the Separates and even the Anglicans. Francis G. Walett, Parkman's editor, has produced a diary of incredible richness and variety, well calculated to appeal to the student of colonial New England. His main task, as he explains in his introduction, was to identify the hundreds of individuals included within the pages of the work. Even with such a large cast to consider, however, it seems unneces-sary to identify the same obscure persons repeatedly. One wishes also that more of the footnotes went beyond mere identification. Nevertheless, the editor's comprehensive introduction furnishes a useful overview of a long, varied, and complex life. The reader will doubtlessly be inconvenienced by the minute type in the text and miniscule footnotes, but one feels certain that this format was imposed by the budgetary necessities of such a massive work, and not by design of the editor. Some people may have been fortunate enough to have read the Diary as it was serialized earlier in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society and elsewhere. For the unlucky ones, there may be a sense of loss upon completing the first installment. So many questions remain un-answered. Will Parkman ever receive a liveable salary? Will his son, Ebenezer, Jr., finally obtain a farm of his own? Will the Parkmans, unlike their neighbors, continue to escape the ravages of smallpox and the throat distemper? Perhaps we shall learn in time, but as Ebenezer Parkman ob-served, "We must now wait the Will of God in what is to follow." Frostburg State College GORDON E. KERSHAW The History of Childhood. Edited by LLOYD DE MAuSE. (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974. iv, 450 p. Index. Hardcover, $12.50; paperback by Harper & Row, $3.95.) This important book is both provocative and disquieting. It should prove useful because of the quantity of information and for providing examples which can be used to test the validity of psychoanalytic history. These essays will force historians to reconsider traditional methods of study and should stimulate further research. Lloyd de Mause deserves our commendation for creating this project and for finding scholars willing to cull through extensive amounts of materials to extract information on This content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms1975 BOOK REVIEWS childhood from Rome until the nineteenth century. The book establishes that children have a history susceptible to investigation. In the introductory essay, de Mause provides a conceptual framework in which the treatment of children appears as a "nightmare" from which we are only beginning to emerge. There is a comforting fillip in his thesis, for he finds progress from barbarism until the present and believes that modern man has the emotional maturity to treat an infant in terms of its own needs rather than those of adults. de Mause argues that historians have focused on the superstructure of economics, politics, or war, but have ignored the key to understanding the development of western civilization found in child-rearing practices. Not all the other contributors to this book share the editor's views, or-at least-some are extremely cautious about using psychoanalytic techniques to interpret their data. A reader gains a sense of perspective on customs in different periods because all authors focus on infanticide, nursing, health, discipline and views of innocence or depravity of children. The danger in the psychoanalytic approach to the history of childhood is that the evidence is elusive and the parents not alive to discuss or put into context their beliefs. Even if they could speak, the circular nature of psychoanalytic theory would preclude an effective rebuttal. The essays by Joseph Illick on seventeenth-century England and America and John Walzer on eighteenth-century America are the contribu-tions dealing with the United States. There are faults in both which make their primary value factual information rather than interpretation. Illick's essay contains thought provoking but unsupported generalizations. On page 308 putting the child out to a wet nurse "was a practice engaged in by most of those who could afford it," but two pages later only the "upper class" employ wet nurses; yet the documentary evidence for either state-ment is scanty. Illick asserts but does not prove that seventeenth-century Englishmen tended to be secularists while their wives were devout. He assumes that because they migrated the settlers of colonial America were engaged in adolescent dreams of escape and were less mature individuals than the Englishmen who stayed at home. In Illick's hands psychoanalysis becomes a way of simplification. The doctrine of "calling" is related to the sublimation of sex; Puritans wrote death narratives of their children because they subconsciously wanted them dead. The same careless use of material mars the Walzer article. For example, that Americans sent their children to school at an early age and apprenticed youth is used to show a parental desire to be rid of them. Yet, since New Englanders built schools in most towns and most American youth were not apprenticed, these phenomena could equally show that Americans were possessive of chil-dren. Since Walzer sees the eighteenth century as a period of ambivalence in which parents projected away and held onto the youth, he can find evidence to support his thesis. After all, it is hard to think of an action by a parent which could not fit into these categories. The central difficulty This content downloaded from 130.58.88.100 on Tue, 16 May 2017 20:51:02 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/termsThe Fur Trade in Colonial New York, I686-I776. By THOMAS ELLIOT NoRTON. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, i974. x, 243 p. Bibliographical note, index. $I2.50.) The fur trade was the economic base for the Dutch colony of New Netherland, with a trading company as its colonizing agent. Fort Orange (Albany), up the Hudson River, was ideally situated to tap the resources of the interior and to carry on trade with the adjacent Iroquois. Hence the Dutch settlers there had a single purpose which they carried over into the period of English rule. For the locality it was a monopoly, and these factors gave New York a distinct advantage over other colonies in this lucrative trade. The fur trade, however, depended upon relations with the Indians who trapped and hunted and then traded their peltry. The Wars of the Iroquois by George T. Hunt pointed out how these Indians fought for the areas producing beaver, and by their conquests over other tribes controlled the trade, while the supply of beaver declined in the East. The Albany Dutch traders not only profited by the trade from the lakes and the West and from the Mohawk; they also reached out for some of the French furs coming down from the North via Lake Champlain. No other colony could match these advantages, and the fur trade of New York was the largest part of that of the English colonies. Since the Dutch traders in New York had this monopoly, they became the people chiefly concerned with Indian relations and were named New York's Indian commissioners. Things went smoothly until the colonial wars and hostilities with the French produced a conflict of interest. The Dutch traders still pursued an active trade with Montreal, receiving furs from the northward and supplying the Canadians with Indian trade goods. Others conceived this as trading with the enemy and gave the Albany Dutch a bad name. Subsequently laws were passed prohibiting the traffic, but it was too well established to be given up, and continued as smuggling. The author of this excellent study of the New York fur trade believes BOOK REVIEWS April with these two essays is the subjective use of evidence to fit the canons of psychoanalytic theory. A distorting ray sometimes provides an illumi-nating perspective, but here it serves too often to blind. This is a pity because Illick makes good use of midwife books, John Locke's writings, and a variety of sources in England and America, and Walzer correctly charts the many changes in the treatment of children which occurred in the eighteenth century. Fortunately, the essays of Mary McLaughlin, J. B. Ross, and Elizabeth Marwick are excellent and provide examples of how insights derived from psychology can aid history. Friends Historical Library J. WILLIAM FROST Swarthmore College 

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Review Of The History Of Childhood Edited By L. DeMause

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