Children who are these beings, and what they want from us?
are not moral agents, they have responsibility, have no autonomy. Not cooperate with the housework, but eat and drink and get dirty. They cost a lot of money, but do not go to work. I'm not even humans, are to preserve and care for the animals with care, protecting them from harm and from every possible source of stress, at least until they cross the threshold of maturity (attached in a permanent), exceeded which are ready to be kicked in the ass like everyone else and deprived of any sense of loyalty. But it's always been like that?
seminal study on the childhood story was written by Philippe Aries in 1960, Fathers and Sons in medieval and modern . According to Aries, the sense of childhood is actually a recent phenomenon that comes about in the eighteenth century, and that did not exist in the Middle Ages or in modern times. The children were conceived as miniature adults, not as special beings. Indeed, before passing the early stages of childhood were not considered at all, and often does not even receive a name (so there was a high probability they died), and once reached a minimum degree of autonomy were immediately catapulted into the adult world. There was no child to be protected and preserved. No golden world. Aries
sources were mainly of iconography and literature (eg by analyzing the evolution of the figure of baby Jesus, at first designed as a small man, then learned more and more children). His methodological approach so far has been criticized on the grounds that such issues were being neglected purely theological and doctrinal differences that contribute to the evolution of the iconographic Christ, or those of mere artistic sensibility.
is a study, according to some Aries exploratory che però ha dato il via a una notevole messe di volumi sullo stesso argomento. I libri di Lloyd de Mause (1974), Edward Shorter (1975), e Lawrence Stone (1977) raggiungevano tutti conclusioni assai diverse fra loro e rispetto ad Ariès, sull'epoca in cui sarebbe iniziata la transizione e sulle cause, però avevano tutti un punto in comune: sposavano cioè la tesi "discontinuista" di Ariès, e indicavano un mutamento epocale, nel passato più o meno recente, nel modo di concepire l'infanzia e quindi nelle condizioni di vita del bambino, e nel modo in cui veniva trattato e accudito.
Si noti che le due cose (l'ideologia e la prassi) sono profondamente diverse, ma non sempre questa distinzione è stata delineated with sufficient rigor in the literature. However, in de Mause's essay in particular (contained in the volume he edited, The History of Childhood ), the thesis discontinuity Aries becomes a real story of magnificent and progressive. That is, things went better and better children:
history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The more you go back in time, the lower is the degree of attention for the child, and more frequently turn to him the fate of being murdered, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexual violence.
In de Mause the thesis is then connected an interpretation of "psychogenic" in history really hard to take seriously, in which each generation of parents, introjecting within himself the trauma suffered during childhood and overcoming them, makes a modest improvement over the previous generation, through a slow process gradual.
For Shorter (T h Making of Modern Family ) instead
maternal care to children are an invention of the modern world. In traditional society, development and happiness of infants less than two years were regarded with indifference by their mothers - that instead, in modern society, above all else put the welfare of children.
Even Stone ( The Family, Sex. and Marriage in England 1550-1800) speaks of a great emotional distance between parents and children, the "fierce determination to break the will of the child to impose a total subjection to the authority of elders and superiors, especially the elderly, and the frequent use of corporal punishment, before that, starting from 1660 or so, you experience a transformation of educational theory and practice of child rearing.
There is no doubt that the culture of a society can have a profound effect on farming practices, but it is well founded suspicion that these historians assign too much importance, given il ruolo essenziale dell'allevamento dal punto di vista della conservazione della specie. Sembrerebbe quasi, infatti, che solo attraverso la civiltà moderna e i moderni principi pedagogici l'uomo abbia imparato a trattare con una certa umanità i membri più piccoli della sua specie, mentre prima non si capisce neanche come i bambini potessero sopravvivere. E sono sempre sospette, le storie di progresso della nostra civiltà, anche per l'implicito giudizio negativo sulle altre culture, rimaste in uno stadio più arretrato. A meno che non si voglia dire che certi peccati sono propri solo dell'Occidente, mentre per qualche miracolo tutti gli altri popoli hanno subito scoperto, per magia, il modo corretto di allevare i bimbi (non mi stupirebbe, che si voglia dire questo: ho letto anche di peggio).
Linda Pollock col libro Forgotten Children , del 1983, provvide a fornire una critica articolata delle teorie precedenti, rifacendosi appunto a fonti, oltre che storiche, sociobiologiche, antropologiche, e allo studio dei primati. La conclusione, piuttosto scontata dal punto di vista del buon senso, è che non si rileva "nessun cambiamento nella quantità di dolore materno o paterno nel corso dei secoli e nessuna conferma alla tesi che i genitori, prima del XVIII secolo, fossero indifferenti alla morte della loro giovane prole".
Il dibattito è poi proseguito, fino ad oggi, con posizioni in genere più mediate rispetto al discontinuismo di Ariès e la sua negazione da parte della Pollock. Certo è che tesi come quelle di de Mause attualmente sono in netta minoranza. Il punto è: perché la gente crede a cose del genere, così in contrasto con la ragionevolezza? Perché ama raccontarsi incredibili storie dell'orrore a proposito della propria civiltà, e del proprio recente passato? O del presente, se è per questo. Perché, ad esempio, c'è gente che, oltre alle storie di pedofilia vera (che esiste), ama inventare storie sui pericoli corsi dall'infanzia e racconti popolati da potentissime sette di orchi satanici che organizzano traffici internazionali di bambini da seviziare? o di messaggi subliminali propinati ai nostri figli per propagandare in maniera subdola sesso e violenza? può sembrare un paragone azzardato, quello fra gli storici alla de Mause, e i complottisti della pedofilia (alla Max Frassi), ma secondo me c'è un collegamento.
Lloyd de Mause, raccontando la sua storia di progresso, vuole farci sentire più buoni, esaltando la cattiveria degli altri, in questo caso dei nostri antenati. Il male viene esorcizzato relegandolo nel passato. Nel caso dei professionisti dell'antipedofilia, il male è esorcizzato allontanandolo dalle famiglie (nelle quali avvengono la stragrande maggioranza dei casi di pedofilia) e relegandolo nelle oscure e alte sfere dei potenti e cattivi, totalmente al di fuori del nostro controllo e della nostra esistenza normale (fenomeno psicologico this explains much of the plot).
In both cases, children are seen as subjects totally passive and inert, and as such creatures as angels. De Mause for the discovery of childhood as something autonomous and separate from the adult world, coincides with a major advancement of civilization. Today, unlike in the past, we are able to recognize children as holy creatures, to be protected by our corrupt world full of ugliness. Children dell'antipedofilia for professionals, can have only one place in the scheme of the universe: that of victims. They are incapable of lying, by their constitution, so whatever they say is truth revealed. The price is their liabilities, the inability of agents to be equipped with an initiative and to be able to affect so even partly on their own life.
The irony is that this is precisely the opposite view to that of Aries, which had endorsed a concept developed decades earlier by Norbert Elias will The Civilizing Process (1939). While inside the thesis discontinuity, in fact, Aries intended as a negative deplore the growing gap between the world of adults and children. Consequence of its "civilizing process", and control of the instincts connected to it. Control of the instincts that is striving to ensure that adults differ from children, or that they learn good manners and behave well in society. That
Aries and Elias was then a romantic conception of the medieval past, in which children were absorbed in a totally containing natural in adult society. Vision that had its flaws, but that was to criticize the moral standards of modern society, isolation of the family within it, the creation of "quarantine" necessary, as the educational institution, before the child was deemed ready integrate into the adult world. The imposition of order and discipline, and the birth of the concept of "fragile children," in which child protection goes hand in hand with the "correction" and the education of it.
In short, the very same ideas Moige.
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