Guideline for viewing primary sources

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Guideline for viewing primary sources

• What are examples of primary sources?
• Not all primary sources are created equal!
• Analytical interpretive skills are necessary!
• Context
• Form
• Audience
• Unintended
• Silences
• What does this document mean to me?

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Additional interpretive tools Questions

• 1) What do we know about the historical period
  and corresponding cultural values (historical
  cultural)?
• 2) What can we conclude about a society that
  treats and views children in this way
  (sociological perspective)?
• 3) What is the effect of a societys view of
  childhood on childrens survival, rearing, play,
  education, responsibilities, or needs, desires,
  abilities (psychological)?
• 4) What are universals of childhood? What stays
  the same across time and place despite changing
  views?

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Bronfenbrenners Contextual Model
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Specific Questions

• How does change occur?
• Gradual (evolutionary)
• Abrupt (revolutionary)
• How does the society operate?
• Rural vs Urban
• Family structure (division of labor)
• Patriarchal (basic assumptions) natural
  superiority of the male, hierarchical social
  structures, greater value of production than
  reproduction
• Is this behavior universal for children?

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Example Infant graves

• Found mass grave of infants and young children in
  Ancient Carthaginian society (flourished 800-150
  B.C.)
• Why?
• Punish children for being sinful?
• Child abuse?
• Religious sacrifice?
• Exposing unfit children?

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Example Terrorizing toddlers

• Bedtime rituals of terror and tall tales (18th
  and 19th century England)
• Why?
• Preparing children for a frightening world?
• Are toddlers easily susceptible to the power of
  the devil?
• Making children behave their parents?
• What do contemporary parents do?
• What might be universal?

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Example Child Abuse

• It took centuries of progress in parent-child
  relations before the West could begin to overcome
  its apparent need to abuse its children. -
  DeMause, 1975
• What would be the need to abuse?
• Has human nature changed or have cultural values
  changed?

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Example Toys

• Suggest adults recognition of childs right to
  play
• May have had multiple functions in ancient
  society
• Ex Dolls as idols
• Ex Models of ships buried for use in afterlife
• May have been used by adults first and then
  children adapted for play

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DeMause, 1975

• Infanticidal (Antiquity)
• Abandonment (Medieval)
• Ambivalent (Renaissance)
• Intrusive (18th century)
• Socializing (19th century until now - 1975)
• Helping (beginning . . . ?)

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Total Baby Video

• Angel --------------------
• Sinner --------------------
• Loaf of bread------------
• Super baby--------------
• Neurotic------------------
• Machine------------------
• Ape-----------------------

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Timeline for 1st half of semester

• Antiquity 700 B.C. - 400 A.D.
• Middle Ages
• Early 400 A.D. to 700 A.D.
• Late 9th to 13th century
• Renaissance late 14th to 16th century
• Puritan/Protestant Reformation 16th to early
  17th century
• Enlightenment late 17th-18th century

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The End