The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, Essay Example

The working, middle class was committed to having a perfect environment of family and home during the nineteenth century. Throughout this time the home replaced the church as a shelter and spiritual place. The home turned into a status symbol against the harsh real world. The father was the leader of the family unit. Middle class family traditions served to keep this order going, with the father as the leader of the table throughout dinners. A famous saying of the day was “youngsters were to be seen not listened.” The wife was to obey her spouse at all times as well. She was also regularly treated as a servant, not as an equivalent human being. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous words pass on the wife’s job to keep the family unit working easily and smoothly: “Man for the field, woman for the hearth, man for the sword and for the needle she; man with the head and woman with the heart, man to command and woman to obey; all else confusion” (Tennyson).

Home turned into the center of goodness and the best possible life for women. The wife was not supposed to do outside work. History specialists are not sure why this happened. For a long time the wife supported her husband in his business. Usually the raising of kids was left to attendants and tutors. Men would work together only with other men. With the wife not helping out with the family’s money needs, there was a very big decline of her status inside social order. Middle class ladies were forced to be introduced to education only a little and to go after social hobbies such as drawing, painting, or playing instruments such as the piano. Completing school will in the end be built to encourage these “talents.”

Regarding what kids should be taught and how they should be raised, people have gotten less conventional as time has passed with a movement from pushing for obedience and guardian-focused families to allowing independence for children. From 1986 to 2006 a larger part of Americans chose thinking for oneself as the most important characteristic for a child to take in and the majority of those saying strict obedience is not as popular as it once was and is declining further (from about 22% in 1985 to something like 13-18% in 2006). In accordance with the decreasing support for obedience, increased support for the strict punishment of kids has also declined throughout the most recent two decades from 84% to 71%.

At the same time, conservative worth and hard work rose in popularity, up from 11% in 1986 to 21% in 2006. This shows that the previously stated switch from parental power to teenage self-governance just shows some part of the developing process. Some accepted qualities, in the same way as hard work, may be making process while some, such as obedience, are losing popularity. Along these lines, the movement from conventional to modern may not be as straightforward as shown in past research. While strict discipline has offered routes to a more liberal method of parenting, raising and directing kids, diligent work and maybe other universal qualities would be more effective for making progress. Therefore it is clear children these days are being raised in a home environment that is more focused on teaching through learning from experience vs. strict authority. This provides children with the opportunity to grow and develop more effectively.

Child slaves in America were seen by their masters and society alike as profitable assets with a money value and worth of their own and a future investment. The usual dress code for slave youths was all in all extremely basic and for the most part was made up of a smock like piece of clothing worn by both young men and young ladies. The dress of kid slaves who, as a rule, “prepared” very little was not usually a necessity and it seems not to have been an unexpected sight to see nude children on an estate. Lost and torn clothing was not often exchanged and the growing phases of children were not considered. Once beginning fieldwork, boys would frequently have been given with trousers and a shirt to wear, while young ladies were given a dress. Shoes were not a common for the children to have and any footwear were usually custom made sandal.

The work of slave children is of specific importance in that this is the main purpose behind their suppression. Ages at which slaves were given something to do changed significantly between ranches, yet the example seems to have been that most slave-owners supported a slow but steady introduction to work. Analyst George Rawick portrays this situation by expressing that a few little children were working in the fields nearby their mothers while the most established age found for the begin of work was 21. Just 48% of interviewees in the Slave Narrative Collection depict completing any type of work before the age of 7 (Rawik, 1972). Tasks performed by more youthful children do not seem to have been gender specific and would include tasks such as taking water to the fields, tending to the farm animals and fields, kitchen and housework and nursing more youthful kids. A few young men were also given the chance to take in trades, for example, metalworker or carpentry, which might have started at a very early age.

The experience and knowledge of slave youths cannot be explained very easily. It changed rapidly due to various elements including time, location, and area, such as slaves taking a working on the sugar and rice plantations being confronted with more demanding physical work than those on tobacco ranches. It is likewise worth noting that a large amount of the hardships confronted by slaves were the consequence of a framework that had outdone its time “slavery frustrated the desires and abilities of the blacks; it perverted the whites. When slavery vanished, no one mourned it for long.” This experience has been put on a pedestal over time. The knowledge of slave children ought to likewise be seen inside the idea of its time when youth, for some, was a long way from difficulties and was immune to dangers and challenges. A large portion of the hardships that the child slave populace faced was reflected in the childhoods of other poor and deprived groups. It should additionally be remembered that numerous children experience similar conditions right up to this day, but in different circumstances.

Ultimately, the children of today are not subjected to the hardships that slave children faced hundreds of ears ago in America. However, many of the struggles are reflected today at a lesser magnitude. The main overlap is clear in observing the lack of gender distinction in today’s age (Curtin, 1972). Boys and girls in schools, for instance, are required to do the same tasks and work in schools and at home. There is not sensitivity to the differences in interests in abilities of boys and girls. In addition, in underprivileged societies, children are thrown into hard labor work to support their families. This includes work that is legal for a child to do such as housework around the neighborhood and other related tasks. Fortunately, child slavery does not continue in today’s age as it once did. However, this is not to say that children today are completely immune to difficult circumstances.

Works Cited

Curtin, Philip D. The Atlantic slave trade: a census. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1972.

Rawick, George P., ed. The American Slave: a Composite Autobiography: Georgia narratives. Vol. 12. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1972.

Tennyson, Alfred. “The Princess. 1847.” The Poems of Tennyson 2: 185-296.