Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe

Rating:
Summary: Accurate, but poorly argued.
Review: All happy families are alike, or so hopes early modern German historian Steven Ozment in his rispote to such scholars as Philippe Aries, Edward Shorter, and Lawrence Stone. In contrast to their generally pessimistic view of the pre-modern family as a horribly cruel institution towards women and children, Ozment portrays the family as loving, with respect between spouses and kindness towards children. Contrary to Aries, early modern and medieval Europeans did not view children just as little adults, but viewed childhood as a series of stages. Parents were horrified and grief stricken when children died, toys were not a development of the eighteenth century, and infanticide was not as common as people might think.

Ozment's account is generally accurate as far as it goes. And in fact the "modernization" paradigm of extreme pre-modern callousness towards women and children has been challenged directly and indirectly by a wide range of historians such as E.P. Thompson, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, Martine Segalen, Keith Thomas and John Demos. Ozment's account is distinguished by being less well argued. There is a tendency to ignore the harsher side of things. Arguing against the idea that the Middle Ages was a pestilential hell-hole, Ozment argues that women actually had more opportunities than they would have for centuries to come. But once those occupations narrowed at the time of the Reformation, Ozment says that wasn't so bad, since women found joy and self-worth in being mothers. Much of his account relies on the literate urban German middle class, a tiny minority of the population. There is no mention of "domestic violence" or "wife-beating," in the index; there is only a brief mention of the subject in which Ozment says society generally disapproved of such violence. Maybe so, but one can't help recall that the peasant aphorisms quoted in Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen are a lot more indulgent. And the work of Anna Clark provides a very different description of wifebeating. Similarly, Ozment argues that infanticide was probably minimal, but he does not discuss the problem of abandonment, which was often a death sentence for unwanted children.

The longest chapter in this brief book is "Parental Advice," which consists of 16 parents from the 1500s to the early 1900s, from Germany and Britain, offering their useful if somewhat didactic advice. There is no clear reason or criteria why these 16 were chosen: listening to the philosopher Hamann or the mathematician Gauss or the Nobel laureate Dehmel criticize their children, one can't help but notice the absence of Frederick the Great's father who punished his disobedient son by executing his best friend in front of his eyes. And one is remindned of Keith Thomas' injunction that historians should listen not just to parents, but to their children as well. Near the end of the book Ozment airily dismisses the objection that his sources are unrepresentative by saying that would be like having to drink all the ocean before deciding whether it was salty. But there is no good reason to doubt the salinity of the ocean worldwide, while one cannot assume that the middle class minority represented the serf and poor peasant majority. All in all, one could be more convincing.

Rating:
Summary: Accurate, but poorly argued.
Review: All happy families are alike, or so hopes early modern German historian Steven Ozment in his rispote to such scholars as Philippe Aries, Edward Shorter, and Lawrence Stone. In contrast to their generally pessimistic view of the pre-modern family as a horribly cruel institution towards women and children, Ozment portrays the family as loving, with respect between spouses and kindness towards children. Contrary to Aries, early modern and medieval Europeans did not view children just as little adults, but viewed childhood as a series of stages. Parents were horrified and grief stricken when children died, toys were not a development of the eighteenth century, and infanticide was not as common as people might think.

Ozment's account is generally accurate as far as it goes. And in fact the "modernization" paradigm of extreme pre-modern callousness towards women and children has been challenged directly and indirectly by a wide range of historians such as E.P. Thompson, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, Martine Segalen, Keith Thomas and John Demos. Ozment's account is distinguished by being less well argued. There is a tendency to ignore the harsher side of things. Arguing against the idea that the Middle Ages was a pestilential hell-hole, Ozment argues that women actually had more opportunities than they would have for centuries to come. But once those occupations narrowed at the time of the Reformation, Ozment says that wasn't so bad, since women found joy and self-worth in being mothers. Much of his account relies on the literate urban German middle class, a tiny minority of the population. There is no mention of "domestic violence" or "wife-beating," in the index; there is only a brief mention of the subject in which Ozment says society generally disapproved of such violence. Maybe so, but one can't help recall that the peasant aphorisms quoted in Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen are a lot more indulgent. And the work of Anna Clark provides a very different description of wifebeating. Similarly, Ozment argues that infanticide was probably minimal, but he does not discuss the problem of abandonment, which was often a death sentence for unwanted children.

The longest chapter in this brief book is "Parental Advice," which consists of 16 parents from the 1500s to the early 1900s, from Germany and Britain, offering their useful if somewhat didactic advice. There is no clear reason or criteria why these 16 were chosen: listening to the philosopher Hamann or the mathematician Gauss or the Nobel laureate Dehmel criticize their children, one can't help but notice the absence of Frederick the Great's father who punished his disobedient son by executing his best friend in front of his eyes. And one is remindned of Keith Thomas' injunction that historians should listen not just to parents, but to their children as well. Near the end of the book Ozment airily dismisses the objection that his sources are unrepresentative by saying that would be like having to drink all the ocean before deciding whether it was salty. But there is no good reason to doubt the salinity of the ocean worldwide, while one cannot assume that the middle class minority represented the serf and poor peasant majority. All in all, one could be more convincing.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written, well-argued, humorous, beautiful book
Review: I don't think I've ever given a book 5 stars before, but this one requires it. I'd love to give a copy to every new parent I know for the "Parental Advice" chapter alone. (It should also be required reading in every Child Development course.) Not only is it a delightful read, the hardcover edition (unquestionably worth the extra $) is classically typeset and bound in such a way that you feel as though you should have discovered it in the corner of an old bookstore.

"Because history is the only deep, empirical record of human behavior we have," writes Ozment, "it is imperitive that new generations on the brink of an unknown future possess the fairest and most accurate information about preceeding ones." Ozment has sifted through the volumes of historical study to present this eloquent yet very succint (I read it in a week) work of verbal art. His narrative is judicial and far from overbearing; he lets the centuries speak for themselves, in their own words--the mark of a wise writer.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written, well-argued, humorous, beautiful book
Review: I don't think I've ever given a book 5 stars before, but this one requires it. I'd love to give a copy to every new parent I know for the "Parental Advice" chapter alone. (It should also be required reading in every Child Development course.) Not only is it a delightful read, the hardcover edition (unquestionably worth the extra $) is classically typeset and bound in such a way that you feel as though you should have discovered it in the corner of an old bookstore.

"Because history is the only deep, empirical record of human behavior we have," writes Ozment, "it is imperitive that new generations on the brink of an unknown future possess the fairest and most accurate information about preceeding ones." Ozment has sifted through the volumes of historical study to present this eloquent yet very succint (I read it in a week) work of verbal art. His narrative is judicial and far from overbearing; he lets the centuries speak for themselves, in their own words--the mark of a wise writer.