15. Middle-Class Children Were Sent Away From the Family
Eighteenth and early 19th-Century European parents had quite uncharitable views of children. Some philosophers and religious leaders preached that children too young to speak rationally were virtually worthless and merely lumps of flesh. Others taught an even harsher belief that young children were vessels of original sin who needed to be cleansed. Adherents to either of these views tended to outsource the parenting of their young children, as it was below the status and efforts of middle and upper-class parents to care for such lowly beings directly.
Wealthier families tended to use wet nurses or family acquaintances of lower social status to raise their children through their youngest period. Jane Austen’s family famously used an acquaintance in a nearby town to raise all of their children to the “logical” age when they were permitted to return. More impoverished families sometimes simply locked very young children in an attic or spare room and treated them with only the most basic care, waiting for them to come of an older age to invest more time and energy into them. Once children were older, around eight to ten, boys of middle and upper-class families would often be sent away again, this time to formal boarding schools. Girls were typically educated at home, either by a governess or her parents.