BOOK: Emily Joan WARD, Royal Childhood and Child. Kingship Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), ISBN: 9781108838375

(Image source: Cambridge University Press)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Refining adult-focused perspectives on medieval rulership, Emily Joan Ward exposes the problematic nature of working from the assumption that kingship equated to adult power. Children’s participation and political assent could be important facets of the day-to-day activities of rule, as this study shows through an examination of royal charters, oaths to young boys, cross-kingdom diplomacy and coronation. The first comparative and thematic study of child rulership in this period, Ward analyses eight case studies across northwestern Europe from c.1050 to c.1250. The book stresses innovations and adaptations in royal government, questions the exaggeration of political disorder under a boy king, and suggests a ruler’s childhood posed far less of a challenge than their adolescence and youth. Uniting social, cultural and political historical methodologies, Ward unveils how wider societal changes between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries altered children’s lived experiences of royal rule and modified how people thought about child kingship.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Joan Ward is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She began her British Academy funded project on ‘Adolescence and Belonging in Medieval Europe, c.1000–c.1250’ in her previous role at University College London. Royal Childhood and Child Kingship is her first book.

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Royal childhood and child kingship: An introduction

Part I. Royal Childhood and Child Kingship: Models and History

2. Children and kingship in the early and central Middle Ages

3. Woe to thee, O land? Models of child kingship

Part II. Royal Childhood: Preparation for the Throne

4. Familial education: Preparing boys to be kings

5. Loyalty, diplomacy and (co-)kingship: Preparing political communities

6. The royal deathbed: Preparing for child kingship

Part III. Child Kingship: Guardianship and Royal Rule

7. Guardianship, regency and legality

8. Adapting and collaborating: Child kingship and royal rule

9. Feasting princes? Violence, conflict and child kingship

10. Entering adolescence: Knighting, seals and royal maturity

Conclusion: Re-thinking child kingship, c. 1050–1262.

More information can be found here

BOOK: Kieran WALSH, The Development of Child Protection Law and Policy Children, Risk and Modernities (London: Routledge, 2020). ISBN 9780367276317, £120.00

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge has published a new book on the history of child protection law, focused on the Republic of Ireland.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book examines how child protection law has been shaped by the transition to late modernity and how it copes with the ever-changing concept of risk.

The book traces the evolution of the contemporary child protection system through historical changes, assessing the factors that have influenced the development of legal responses to abuse over a 130-year period. It does so by focussing on the Republic of Ireland where child protection has become emblematic of wider social change. The work draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources including legislation, case law and official and media reports of child protection inquiries. It also utilises insights developed through an extensive examination of parliamentary debates on child protection matters. These materials are assessed through the lens of critical discourse analysis to explore the relationship between law, social policy and social theory as they effect child protection. While the book utilises primarily Irish sources, this multidisciplinary approach ensures the argument has international applicability.

The book will be a valuable resource for all those with an interest in the development of child protection law.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kieran Walsh is a Senior Lecturer in Family and Child Law at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Modernity, Reflexivity, Risk And The Law;

Chapter 2: Threats, Victims And Agents: Victorian Law Reform And The Beginning Of Modern Child Protection;

Chapter 3: Children In The Constitutional Order Of Traditional Modernity;

Chapter 4: Children And Risk In Independent Ireland, 1921-1970;

Chapter 5: The Twilight Of Traditional Modernity: Children In Child Protection Law And Policy, 1970-1993;

Chapter 6: Children’s Rights And Constitutional Change;

Chapter 7: Child Abuse And Risk In A New Modernity: Child Protecion Law And Policy 1992 – 2006;

Chapter 8: Agents Of Change: Children And Risk In Reflexive Modernity 2006-2017;

More info here

BOOK: "Abuse or Punishment? Violence toward Children in Quebec Families, 1850-1969", by Marie-Aimée Cliche (2014)

Abuse or Punishment? Violence toward Children in Quebec Families, 1850-1969, by Marie-Aimée Cliche, translated by W. Donald Wilson. The book is part of the Press's Studies in Childhood and Family in Canada Series, Wilfred Laurier University Press. 

All information here

Description:

At one time, the use of corporal punishment by parents in child-rearing was considered normal, but in the second half of the nineteenth century this begin to change, in Quebec as well as the rest of the Western world. It was during this period that the extent of ill-treatment inflicted on children—treatment once excused as good child-rearing practice—was discovered.

This book analyzes both the advice provided to parents and the different forms of child abuse within families. Cliche derives her information from family magazines, reports and advice columns in newspapers, people’s life stories, the records of the Montreal Juvenile Court, and even comic strips. Two dates are given particular focus: 1920, with the trial of the parents of Aurore Gagnon, which sensitized the public to the phenomenon of “child martyrs;” and 1940, with the advent of the New Education movement, which was based on psychology rather than strict discipline and religious doctrine.

There has always been child abuse. What has changed is society’s sensitivity to it. That is why defenders of children’s rights call for the repeal of Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which authorizes “reasonable” corporal punishment. Abuse or Punishment? considers not only the history of violence toward children in Quebec but the history of public perception of this violence and what it means for the rest of Canada.

BOOK: "Cohabitation and Non-Marital Births in England and Wales" (1600-2012), edited by Rebecca Probert (June 2014)

Cohabitation and Non-Marital Births in England and Wales (1600-2012), edited by Rebecca Probert, (University of Warwick) 

June 2014

All information here 

From the press:

Today, almost half of all children are born outside marriage, with cohabiting relationships accounting for the majority of such births. But what was the situation in earlier centuries? Bringing together leading historians, demographers and lawyers, this interdisciplinary collection examines the changing context of non-marital child-bearing in England and Wales since 1600. Drawing on Private Acts of Parliament, ecclesiastical court records, reported cases, sessions files, coronial records, poor law records, petitions to the London Foundling Hospital, the registers of the London Bridewell, the records of charitable institutions, surveys and modern demographic data, it not only shows the relative rarity of cohabitation in earlier periods but also discovers the nature of individual relationships. It also explores how differences in the extent of both non-marital child-bearing and cohabitation emerge depending on definition, source material, interpretation and location, building up a more nuanced picture of past practices.