Image Credittylerhoff / Flickr / CC By 2.0 Once again, children have become objects unworthy of life, protection, or tutelage. What kind of society does this to children?
Americans who would sacrifice anything to protect their children may be surprised to learn that their inclination is a rather modern phenomenon. For most of human history, the most dangerous period of any person’s life was childhood. Only if a newborn survived the first decade of disease, warfare, hunger, and all the other mundane threats to ordinary human existence would the survivor gain any type of social recognition.
O.M. Bakke explores this reality in his book , “When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity.” Before the spread of Christianity transformed prevailing cultural beliefs , children had no legal standing in the pagan societies of the Roman Empire and elsewhere.
In human history, it has been normal for unwanted babies to […]
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