Child Welfare.
This rough treatment of children is likewise shown in reference to their position at meals. In those old days children were often not permitted to be seated at their meals but they were to stand and eat as rapidly as possible, so as to get out of the way and troubling of the adults, and to keep quiet and make no complaint at their treatment. Sometimes the children had to stand at the side of the table and eat their food standing, while the parents and the other adults were seated. Again, the children would stand behind their parents and the other grown people and receive such food as would be handed back to them from the table, just as with the household animals. In other families the children stood at a side-table and they would take their trenchers to the large table to receive the food to take back to their own table to eat.
That these early people were deeply interested in their children's welfare and appreciated their hardships is shown by the following statements from the writings of Governor Bradford:
"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender hearts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their parents burdens, were often times so oppressed with their hevie labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and became decreped in their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children, by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away by evil examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some became souldiers, other took upon them for viages by sea, and other some worse courses, tending to disoluteness and the danger of their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted."[307]