Love to the Little Ones

Parents today tend to believe that they face more problems in bringing up their children than ever before. They are certainly offered more advice — from professional childcare experts, from other parents, and from the government. This anthology shows how mothers and fathers themselves have thought about and written to their children over the last 800 years, using examples from letters, diaries, and books of advice. The book is divided into five phases of a parent's life: pregnancy through infancy; childhood; adolescence; adulthood; and death. Readers find that the fundamental feelings of parents now and parents then seem to be unchanged. Their affections, their anxieties, their hopes, their difficulties, and their grief transcend time. The book also highlights the dramatic differences between then and now. Letters and diaries include the predicament of a mother trying to mediate between her son and his father, 400 years ago, and an 18th-century father who advises his friend to read to his pregnant wife every night.