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> Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how
by quartesixte 5y ago
> Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for.
They’d also have a fair amount of siblings and cousins, the children of hired help, and entire village’s worth of other children to interact with. And depending on the era, a fair amount of absenteeism when it comes to actual parenting. So having peers of your age was both common, historically encouraged (stories of childhood friends abound), and important in establishing your place inside your community.
That being said, they were exposed to more adults on a daily basis, and integrated more into the life of adults.
Particularly, they were exposed to the daily lives of adults at work. Which I think is a large part of helping to influence a child’s growth.
Childhood as we know it now is also a modern concept — the switch from childhood to adult was more child > young adult who doesn’t really know what they’re doing, rather than our modern child > adolescent > young adult path. (Edit because I hit submit too early). Childhood as also being an experience of being sequestered from the outside world is also modern.
- quercusa 5y agoWe found that homeschooled kids were able to play with kids of a wide range of ages, while kids in formal schools quickly separated themselves into age groups, often to the detriment of the younger kids.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rr808 5y ago10 brothers & sisters was pretty normal, not just your house but the neighbors all around you too. Children everywhere.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoYet a wide gamut of ages. And plenty of death before modern standards of sanitation and medicine.
- WalterBright 5y agoWhen I was a kid, one's first job was as a teenager. Today, one's first job is as a college graduate. I sometimes read accounts of what a shock it is to make that transition.
- rayiner 5y agoBen Sasse covers this extensively in “the Vanishing American Adult.” In particular the artificiality of the highly age-segregated nature of modern schools. Kids have always hung out with kids, but those kids had a wide range of ages and older kids taught younger kids.
- quartesixte 5y agoThe somewhat way around this was/is sports and other extracurriculars, where the older kids lead the younger kids. Is this no longer a thing?
- wolverine876 5y ago>> Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm ... > They’d also have a fair amount of siblings and cousins, the children of hired help, and entire village’s worth of other children to interact with. There's no reason to think that what we did historically is somehow better. We've made many changes for very good reasons - apropos to our conversation, universal schooling and literacy - and I hope to keep moving forward! If we mean it as evidence of how we evolved, then working on farms certainly isn't it. We evolved as nomadic hunter-gatherers, over ~200,000 years as homo sapiens, and over millions of years as our homo ancestors (I believe our line separated from chimps about 7 million years ago). Farming is a recent hack!