Middle-Class Childhood Between 1500 and 1800: Examples of the Lives of Artists, Musicians, and Writers*

“Never be hard with children. Many a fine character has been ruined by the stupid brutality of pedagogues.”

Hobbes is often quoted as having said that life is “nasty, poor, brutish and short.” For the majority of mankind the good philosopher was probably not far off. Some, including de Mause (1974), whose recent book The History of Childhood has established him as a pioneer in this field, would contend that had Hobbes focused his attention on the lot of children, rather than on mankind in general, his estimation of life would have been bleaker still.

Having asked the question what was it like to be a child during various epochs of the past, and in various countries, de Mause, along with those who contributed chapters in his book, concluded that throughout Western history (little having yet been reconstructed about childhood in the Orient) a child's life was indeed “nasty, poor and brutish.” Owing to the terrible toll exacted by the infectious diseases of early life before our century, it was all too often “short” as well.

In contrast to our own day when infanticide and child-beating are usually only encountered as aberrations in households of the