The Disciplining and Instructive Parent
The Disciplining and Instructive Parent
This chapter discusses features of childrearing from the parents’ perspective. Both mothers and fathers were tasked with raising happy and virtuous children. In this process, emotional management was required of both children and parents. The repression of inappropriate emotions and display of acceptable ones was essential, since ideal parents served as examples to their offspring. Severity and passion were to be avoided at all costs when parents exercised discipline. Instead parents were to use affection and tenderness to discipline and instruct their children. They were to guide children by inculcating sympathy, through persuasion, rational explanation and conversation. A key aspiration was to be the child's friend and companion. This rapport theoretically levelled out the power distribution between parents and children. Yet this chapter demonstrates that benign authority was not novel because affection and authority were often combined within patriarchy.
Keywords: mothers, fathers, childrearing, discipline, instruction, emotional management, authority, patriarchy, sympathy, power
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