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7000 BCE
Children used to be sacrificed.
the sacrifice of children could be for a magical ritual, or because they tried to kill the son of the enemy in a war -
300 BCE
Sexual Abuse of Children
In some civilizations like rome or greece, growing up, most of the times, included being sexually abused by older men. -
374
Change of conception of infant death.
The law began to consider killing an infant murder only Yet even the opposition to infanticide by the Church Fathers often seemed to be based more on their concern for the parent’s soul than with the child’s life. -
Jan 1, 1100
A separate concept of childhood was unknown in the early Middle Ages
During de 12th century, the medieval art didn't know about chilhood because all the artist were unable to despict a child except as a man on a smaller scale. -
Jan 1, 1230
Infants were felt to be on the verge of turning into totally evil.
The belief that infants were felt to be on the verge of turning into totally evil beings is one of the reasons why they were tied up, or swaddled, so long and so tightly. Like Bartholomaeus Anglicus said: “And for tenderness the limbs of the child may easily and soon bow and bend and take diverse shapes. And therefore children’s members and limbs are bound with lystes, and other covenable bonds, that they be not crooked nor evil shapen” -
Jan 1, 1400
Parents cry out to themselves only when the child dies.
Is only at the moment of death that the parent, unable to empathize before, cries out to himself. the parents loved the child but never used that love to make the child happy; they treated him more like a stranger than a son. -
Jan 1, 1400
tying and Swaddling the children.
restraints were necessary because the child was so full of dangerous adult projections so if the parents didn't swaddle it, would "scratch its eyes out, tear its ears off, break its legs, distort its bones, be terrified by the sight of its own limbs, and even crawl about on all fours like an animal". -
The idea of perfect child
The perfect child was believed to be one who literally breast-feeds the parent, and the ancients would agree. Peter Charron called it “turning the stream back again up to the fountainhead". -
the conception of baptism as an exorcism begins to take place.
Richard Allestree said: “the new-born babe is full of the stains and pollution of sin, which it inherits from our first parents through our loins . . “ Baptism used to include actual exorcism of the Devil, and the belief that the child who cried at his christening was letting out the Devil long survived the formal omission of exorcism in the Reformation. -
Infanticide in every country of Europe
there was high incidence of infanticide in every country in Europe. foundling homes were opened in each country, and the babies poured in from all over, the homes quickly ran out of room. -
Purges, suppositories, and enemas during childhood
Children have been always associated with excrements, so it was necessary to examine the babies body on the inside by giving them purges, suppositories and enemas. -
Efforts to bring child abuse under control
"Parents began punishing their children for masturbation, and doctors began to spread the myth that it would cause insanity, epilepsy, blindness, and death". -
One of the earliest defenders of childhood in nineteenth-century appears
Jean Paul Richter condemned parents who kept children in order “by images of terror”, claiming medical evidence that they “frequently fall victims to insanity”. -
Whipping began to go out of style
Beating the child began to go out of style and stopped being a practice for the parents because there were laws against the beating of children.
