Childcare Manuals

There have always been experts advising parents how to raise their children: community elders, religious leaders, and medical men and women, among others. In most cultures, though, childrearing advice has been passed on by word of mouth, often among neighbors and kin. Even in modern developed societies oral transmission continues, with knowledge and information about childrearing practices passed down the generations and between peers. However, a significant change occurred in the 18th century with the proliferation of printed material. Coupled with demographic changes such as smaller families and increased social and geographical mobility, the availability of childcare literature encouraged parents to turn to this new source of advice. Advice manuals have been written by a range of experts, from physicians and philosophers to educators and psychologists, and their authors have also included parents themselves. Underlying themes present within the manuals selected here are the tension between “scientific” and “natural” approaches to childrearing, and the degree to which parents should try to meet or anticipate their children’s needs and wants. However, when reading advice literature we need to remain cautious about the picture of childrearing such manuals present. While we have evidence that manuals were written, and even that they were read, we know far less about if and how parents actually followed the advice they contained. Just because mothers had “the book” it did not mean they used it. Differences occurred in how parents accessed, received, and applied the advice on the grounds of gender, class, region, and ethnicity. Parents’ accessibility to other sources of advice, whether in the form of kin, professionals, or new technologies such as the Internet, has also varied. This article focuses on childcare manuals and books written or popular in translation in the English-speaking world, although reference is also made to cultures of childrearing in comparative perspective.