Children of the Poor.
Metropolitan Working Classes’ Association.
Among the working classes, until the Church began to establish its schools, the children grew up anyhow, and could in few cases read or write. Infant mortality and unhealthy conditions of childhood were prevalent. So much was this the case that in 1847, while little was yet being thought or written about Children, the Metropolitan Working Classes’ Association for Improving the Public Health actually put out a pamphlet on their proper rearing and training. This document had some considerable circulation, but its usefulness must have been greatly curtailed by the inability of so many people in those days to read.
Literature Concerning Children.
Before this publication the literature on the subject of children was extremely scanty. Not only was this the case but those people who did from time to time write on the subject seem to have been ashamed of doing so, and their works, appearing once or twice in a century, are for the most part anonymous.
The Office of Christian Parents.
There exists a treatise printed by Cantrell Legge, printer to the University of Cambridge, in the year 1616, with the title “The Office of Christian Parents, showing how Children are to be governed throughout all ages and times of their life. With a brief Admonitorie addition unto children to answer in dutie to their Parents’ office.”
Personal Care of the Mother.
Possible Extinction of Boarding Schools.
The writer, whoever he may have been, appears to have at that very early date grasped the importance of his subject, for he says, “The Parent is put in trust to governe the chiefest creature under heaven, to train up that which is called the Generation of God.” Being thus impressed with the value of children, it is natural to find the author of the treatise giving advice that is being more and more strongly urged upon parents at the present day. Eminent doctors insist upon the advantage to infants of being personally cared for by the mother, and not handed over wholesale to a nurse. Educational experts are more and more inclined to take the view that children should be kept at home as long as possible. So far, indeed, has this theory advanced that there is a suggestion of the ultimate extinction of our great public boarding schools in favour of a larger number of schools so situated that children may attend them as day scholars while still living at home under parental care and influence.