Help with first draft

I've been trying to finish up my first draft for the las couple of days. So far I've only been able to come up with six pages and I'm not real sure where I need to add more detail and how to wrap it up at the end. So if anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.


The saying goes that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. This saying is still around because of the truth behind it. I have learned a lot about the roles and attitudes of children in the household in the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Pictures during this time period show how children where thought of, their importance in the family and the roles they played. The attitudes about how children should be seen have changed drastically since colonial times in America. Children went from being seen as little adults until the early 1800’s. During this time the emphasis was put on children learning to be adults unlike present times where children are expected to learn but are given time to just be kids. Later during the 1800’s children were seen just as children in a category all their own. Boys and girls were thought to be the basically the same. They were no longer expected to grow up as fast as before. Later on in the 1800’s male and female children were treated as two different groups once they reached about 4 or 5 years of age.
At the beginning of this time children were looked at as being unrefined and not something to brag about. The best possible outcome was for them to grow up and be normal healthy adults. The childlike qualities we admire today were looked at as being just a stage to get through. Karin Calvert’s opinion on this subject is that children were seen as little adults. This is why children in eighteenth century paintings look so serious and wooden because adult like features were valued and not the childish features that they had.
Their childish features weren’t valued in pictures but this isn’t to say their parents and family didn’t love them. If they weren’t loved then parents wouldn’t have gone to the expense of having paintings done on them. Like most parents throughout time they want to be able to see their kids as perfect or as close to it as they can get. This perfection could be reached by growing up into a productive adult. Many times, though not all, children were pictured with toys that that served as an education tool. Little girls who would eventually grow up to become mothers carried dolls. Young boys were often pictured with animals, which tended to show that they were getting ready for a life as a farmer. During this phase children were pictured as a group of siblings or with the mother. This shows that children were expected to make a contribution to the family but it was nowhere near as important as the father’s role. They are pictured with the mother because they were expected to do household chores.
Boys as they grew older were posed in similar styles as their father which signals that they are responsible for more than their sisters. Girls tended to stay in the same rolls they just took on more household responsibilities. Both of these things could be seen in the types of dress as well as poses and positions in family portraits. Very young boys and girls both wore dresses and there wasn’t much if any distinction between the sexes.
Boys started to dress more like their fathers at about 8 or 9 years of age. Which gave them more freedom of movement and they were able to play more physically than girls were. Girls didn’t really change their dress at all and were expected to sit quietly and read, practice sewing or other domestic activities. Girls didn’t have an age where they had a dramatic change in the roles they were to play within the family and continued to wear clothing that restricted physical activity.
Thankfully this trend of corseting children didn’t continue into the mid 1700’s to the 1800’s. Parents during this time were less physically restrictive with their children’s clothing and felt less of a need to swaddle their newborns. This can be seen with pictures of children having more of the childlike characteristics. Children during this time period were seen as children and not differentiated as boy and girls. Unlike earlier generations they were allowed to learn to crawl. Before crawling was looked upon as degrading and something to be avoided at all costs. Crawling was now a considered a normal phase of development. Children’s dress and hairstyles were different from their parents but was pretty much the same regardless of weather the child was a boy or a girl.
Girls and boy were considered different from each other in the late 1800’s. Very young children were still dressed the same until they reached the age of three or four. Before then they were still dressed the same but once they reached that age they started to dress different boys were wearing pants and girls were wearing dresses and britches or pantaloons. This allowed girls more freedom of jumping and playing. Children also had more time for this because their responsibilities were shifting from household duties to schooling. This isn’t to say they didn’t have chores at home and their parents didn’t expect them to help around the house.
Parents seemed to be closer with their children. Family photos often had the parents in the center of the photo surrounded by all their children. In photos young children and girls were most often pictured with their mothers. Which would make sense because young children weren’t yet school age and spent their days with their mothers and girls were expected to help more around the house to prepare them for their future lives as a housewife.
I think this shows how parents were proud of their children and not just waiting for them to grow up. This was partially due to the fact that children were seen as an asset and not a liability. Having more children meant parents had more help on farms and also ensured they had someone to take care of them in their old age. The responsibility of taking care of their parents in old age made being educated and successful important. In my search for family photos I found a lot of pictures taken during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s of school children. Which show that school was a priority because photos were taken of important events and memories that were important to us.
Children of early settlers of the west found life revolved around the schoolhouse. Parent did teach their children things and instructed them in religion but teachers in the schoolhouse formally taught them. Sundays were also spent at the schoolhouse because it in smaller towns it doubled as a church. While their parents, regarding religion, instructed children many also went to Sunday school to receive further instruction. This was pretty much the extent of their lives outside the family.

IMAGE 26
Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library

Boys had much more freedom than girls growing up. Part of this was due to their clothing. They wore pants so they were able to run and jump around. This freedom encouraged loud and boyish behaviors. As boys got older their clothing stayed very unrestricted and part of this was due to the fact that they were expected to do much of the physical work on farms to help their fathers. Like girls who were expected to help with house work to help them prepare for the future this was also to help boys prepare to be providers for their future families.
Girls on the other hand weren’t so lucky in the clothing department. Once they reached early teens they were no longer wearing short dresses and pantaloons that offered them some freedom of movement. They were expected to start wearing corsets and quite restricting clothes to help shape their bodies to give it an appealing feminine look. This had the additional feature of forcing girls to be more ladylike and not run and jump around like boys. Girls in family photos didn’t tend to dress in as fancy clothes as their mothers so I would assume they were stilled looked upon as being almost as children even into their adolescence. Girls tended to wear less intricately designed dresses that seemed to be more about practicality than about fashion.
Boys on the other hand even at a young age tended to dress almost identical to their fathers in these pictures. Which to me would mean that boys were seen not necessarily as equals but more as adults than the girls were. This is probably because boys were able to contribute to the physical labor in the family, which was seen, as more important than women’s work inside the home.

IMAGE 25 and IMAGE 23
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Another difference was the toys they played with. Toys at this time tended to be very simple and forced a child to use their imagination. In family photos children weren’t pictured with toys but when they were photographed alone they were with numerous different thing. Many outdoor photos were of boys taken with pets. If a girl’s picture was taken out doors it was usually in a picnic setting or playing with dolls with a sister or other young family member. This just enforces the stereotype of girls quietly playing while boys ran around.