Figure 1.--.

Fathers usually let their wives deal with the children when they were young, but even here fathers varied on how they exercized their authority. As a boy got older, his father would play an increasingly important role in his upbringing, including the selection of clothes. I have not yet drafted the essay on fathers, but have begun to collect some information.

Sources

In the early modern era, the thesis of parental cruelty is well countered in Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450-1700 (Longman 1984), and Keith Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680 (Hutchinson, 1982).

For the Reformation era, Steven Ozment is forceful in When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Harvard U.p., 1983), and there is Louis Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children....Floence, 1300-1600 (Macmillan, 1998).

Medieval times? counterblasts to Aries in B. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound and S. Shahar, Children in the Middle Ages (1990).

Created: March 17, 1999
Last updated: February 3, 2000