Changes A Point Of View Related To Child Labor During The Victorian Period

Many of the identifying themes that define the Victorian Era were evident in child education and upbringing. The general ideological shift from realism towards the romantic showed itself in the glamorization of the child as an innocent who is born good, as espoused by Rousseau, but that may be turned by the evils inherent in society. “Following Rousseau, and in the hands of Romantic poets such as William Blake and William Wordsworth, childhood came to be seen as especially close to God and a force for good.” (Perceptions of Childhood, 2014). 

Education that built inner strength to resist temptations, therefore, was at least for the upper classes, of crucial importance. The glorification of the ‘pure’ family unit as depictions of a virgin Mary type mother with cherubic infant, and a stern but loving all-father who would correctly guide the youth were popular during this time, with the example of Victoria and Albert with their children being widely published, were in direct contrast of the reality of parental neglect and oftentimes rigid and cold childrearing, with corporal punishment a common occurrence. (Duke University School of Law, 2010).

This Victorian focus on morality led to a strictness in child rearing for all children, though how it materialized in actuality differed depending on station in life. The vast differences on child rearing and education during the Victorian Era were primarily based on class and social structure. While wealthy children had advantages in care and feeding as well as education, they frequently suffered from parental neglect, being relegated to a frequently strict nanny’s care, and authoritarian caregiving styles were typical for the time. Alternately, poor children, even those as young as the age of 4 or 5, “…had to work public jobs to help support their families many parents thought of children as income, and having more children who worked raised the income of the home. Many parents had 10 or 12 or even more children for this reason alone.” (Victorian Children 2012). For the middle class, families were not always able to afford a nanny and thus the mother raised the children while the father worked, but authoritarian rule was still the norm of the day and I imagine that the ‘Just wait until you father gets home’ saying was born in some variation during this time. For the middle class, education, at least for males, was of high priority as it afforded some small amount of upward mobility.

Children of this class, though they went to paying work later than their poorer peers, still ultimately contributed to family finances until the time that they began their own families.During this era, Sigmund Freud’s theories, in part influenced by the mores of the day, regarding the development of morality and of right and wrong, meshed with those of Rousseau to emphasize the value of purity and goodness, with what today would be considered an unusual focus on sexuality. The roles of girl children to learn domestic skills and become the soft maternal figure whose sexual purity is never in doubt became the ideal, with boys learning to become the strong “Paterfamilias” (Journal of Men’s Studies, 2003) though some such as Charles Dickens were portrayed as more nurturing, and Dicken’s writings had some impact on changing views on child labor, “Oliver Twist, as everybody knows, is Dickens’ novel about an orphaned boy who starts life in a workhouse and after trials on the streets of London in Fagin’s “gang”, is eventually adopted by a middle class gentleman who has liberal and gentle ideas of parenthood.” (Sheffield Children’s Hospital, 2001).

During the early Victorian period, child labor was the norm, with little to no regulation. Changing views brought new laws, and “in 1870, Education Act made it mandatory for children between five to ten years of age to go to school. It was not until 1881 that the Act was made applicable throughout the country.” (Victorian Era Child Labor). Even with this change, children worked long hours outside of the educational setting, and eventually, limits for both children and adults of 10 hour working days became mandatory. The horrors of child labor caused many notable people to become crusaders for more humane working conditions. Writers such as Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work brought awareness to the issue, and others set up agencies such as the Children’s Employment Commission (The Victorian Child, 2013) that brought further awareness to conditions, particularly those in mines.

This contrary attitude between the glorification of the ‘good’ child and the inhumane conditions and work done by poor children is puzzling today, but at the time, even Prince Albert “argued that the working man’s children were “part of his productive power,” an indispensable source of family income” (The Victorian Child, 2013) while at home he designed a regiment of learning for his own children including the girls that was by all accounts broad in scope, and disregarding the conditions faced by children in mills and mines or those faced by children used as chimney sweeps for their small size. Much of the Victorian Age is a study of such contrasts, “These contradictory impulses of cruelty and concern informed the actions of individual Victorians”, as demonstrated by the story of a journalist who wrote against child prostitution and for an increased age of consent by kidnapping a young girl, faking accosting her and then writing a lurid account of the affair in order to effect change. (The Victorian Child, 2013).

The Victorian Era also began to see the decline in the number of children had by upper classes, while at the same time morals made the topic of birth control taboo. This contrast continued well beyond the age and into the 20th century before women were able to discuss family planning. Even families that were large by necessity such as the poor needing child workers, or by glamorization of family life and the taboo of birth control, such as Victoria and Albert, child survival rates to adulthood were abysmally low. Child birth, disease and injury all played a role in families feeling the need to have large families so that at least some of the children survived to adulthood. Advances in medical understanding in the spread of disease were slow and poorly comprehended throughout much of the Victorian age. (National Institutes of Health).