Regency Reader Questions: Ladies and Young Children

Regency Reader Question
I just finished reading a Regency novel in which a lady spends the season with her younger sister in London. Since their mother is dead, she is the chaperone for her younger sister. The lady is a widow and has two young children (ages 5 and 3). In the book, she leaves the children with their nanny at her estate in the country. Is this plausible, or would she rather take the children (and her nanny) to London? After all, she will stay in London for at least 2 or 3 months and will not see her children … Thanks in advance for the answer!

Thanks for the question, Emily, and for being a Regency Reader!

This is an interesting question and probably one of those “depends” (on class, income, situation, gender of children, etc.) kind of answers, but I am going to take the opportunity to dive into it a little bit.

Since we roughly know the class of the lady, we are going to focus on that and not fall into the nasty history of child labor and exploitation for working class people.  Just know that children’s rights didn’t come into focus until the latter half of the 19th century.  So yea, kids working in factories was commonplace in the early 19th century.

In this case, we have a wealthy family where the eldest sister assumes the role of mother to escort her younger sister to presumably the marriage mart.  I want to ask some more questions about the probability of a young widow gaining entrée without an established male supporter, but for fear of chasing a rabbit into a rabbit hole will stay focused.

Male children of upper class families typically left the home at age seven for boarding school.  This was part of an overall belief starting in the Georgian era that living away from home was a critical development tool to encourage young men to be independent, masculine, and social adept (The Georgian guide to perfect parenting – HistoryExtra).  Young women were taught domestic arts by their mothers, governess, and/or home based tutors.  The depth of involvement in this training was entirely dependent on the individual family, although there was a general sense of moral and familial obligation to motherhood by the Regency era.  Smaller children would get simple lessons, often with a religious influence.

Generally, the 18th century saw a rise in focus on the home, family, and domesticity (Pollock, 1983) with an emphasis on motherhood.  This influenced an overall change in childcare with a new direction of humane sentiment.  However, this differed from region to region and family to family (Pollock, 1983).  There were also the competing beliefs that children needed to be obedient and that willfulness needed to be eliminated, resulting in either physical punishment or the withholding of love and attention from children (Pollock, 1983).  Many parents had a “formal” relationship with their children where the parents were distant, unapproachable and the children were kept at a distance (Pollock, 1983).

The ability to be distant was facilitated by help. Nurse was the more common term for nanny in the Regency era (Regency Servants ~ Caring for the Wee Ones, by Sharon Lathan by Sharon Lathan on Austen Authors), and this woman would be charged as the child’s primary caretaker from birth until age five or six.  This would include spending meal times, educational, and play time with the children.  Mothers may be involved at different times throughout the day, but commonly if they could afford the help they utilized it.  This would be most particularly the case when there was activity or entertainment to be had for the adults.

Based on all the emerging and often conflicting attitudes towards child rearing in the the 18th and early 19th century, I think its likely that some mothers did opt to leave their children at home during the Season.  Keep in mind that children were not welcome in most social settings and it was the norm for small children to not eat meals with the adults in the family.  Its also important to remember that our modern sensibilities towards children do not directly reflect attitudes of that era, and that in the Regency era the concept of children as we understand them today was just beginning to emerge and grow.

What today seems hard to fathom, leaving your young children in the care of staff while you are away for several months, in that era may have seemed more normal and even beneficial for the children if the parents were concerned about influences, environmental health issues, and general distractions in Town.  So was this part of the novel plausible?  Indeed.  Was it universal?  No, and certainly not for less affluent families.

I hope that helps!

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Bibliography

The Family in Early Modern England. (2007). Poland: Cambridge University Press.

The History of Childhood. (1995). United States: Jason Aronson, Incorporated.

Hart, S. N. (1991). From property to person status: Historical perspective on children’s rights. American Psychologist, 46(1), 53.

Lowden, J. (2002). Children’s rights: a decade of dispute. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 37(1), 100-107.

Pollock, L. A. (1983). Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900. Kiribati: Cambridge University Press.

Wilderspin, S. (1823). On the Importance of Educating the Infant Children of the Poor: Showing how Three Hundred Children, from Eighteen Months to Seven Years of Age, May be Managed by One Master and Mistress: Containing Also an Account of the Spitalfields Infant School. United Kingdom: T. Goyder.