Many of the issues parents face today would have seemed like science fiction in Abraham Lincoln’s time. How do we monitor our kids’ online activities? At what age should they get cell phones? How do we balance “screen time” with sports, homework and playing outside?
Yet as far as parenting philosophies go, the Lincolns and their contemporaries have more in common with modern parents, even with our digital technology, than they did with their own parents and grandparents.
In colonial America, the family functioned as an economic unit, and each member of the household was responsible for contributing to the household’s production and survival. Families were large, and children were expected to pitch in as soon as they were old enough to be useful.
This didn’t leave a lot of room for sentimentality where the family was concerned. Marriages were often arranged for practical purposes: a father might marry his daughter off to the neighbor’s son to combine their parcels of land, for example. Romantic love between spouses was the exception, not the rule. Children were viewed as products of original sin that needed to have their wicked wills broken in order to become upright and productive citizens.
All that was changing around the time that Lincoln rode into Springfield. As urban, middle-class professional men started working in offices separate from their homes, the family was increasingly bound together by ties of affection rather than economy. Men and women started marrying for love, limiting the size of their families and investing additional care and affection in their children. Childhood then, as today, was seen as a time of innocence and natural goodness that parents sought to indulge and enjoy.
Consider the difference between Lincoln’s experience and that of his children. Lincoln was born on a farm and expected to work for the family’s benefit until he legally came of age at 21. He later recalled that at age 8 he “had an axe put into his hands at once; and from that till within his twenty-third year, he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument – less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons.” Lincoln left home at his earliest opportunity and his relationship with his father was so cool that Lincoln opted not to visit him on his deathbed.
Lincoln’s children, by contrast, spent their days playing with their toys in their carpeted sitting room or attending school. Mary Lincoln later recalled that Lincoln “was very – exceedingly indulgent to his children. Chided or praised them for what they did – their acts, etc. He always said It is my pleasure that my children are free, happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents.” William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, took a slightly more dour view: “Had [his children] s—t in his hat and rubbed it on his boots, Lincoln would have laughed and thought it smart.”
Today, as in Lincoln’s day, most people view love as the primary tie that binds a family together. And in Lincoln’s day, just as today, many parents grappled with issues familiar to modern parents.
Drinking in college – Robert Todd Lincoln’s friend Clinton Conkling went off to Yale in 1860 and received the following letter from his father: “Your mother upon looking over your statement of account said she was very sorry to see you used so much ‘porter’…”
Appropriate clothing – Lincoln’s fellow attorney Benjamin Edwards of Springfield believed that all proper young girls should sport pantalettes and insisted that his daughters wear them. His daughter Alice, however, was mortified at being forced to wear something that had gone out of style. Her solution was to walk down the block until she was out of sight of her parents’ house and then pin up the offending pantalettes so no one could tell she was wearing them.
Hitting the books – Benjamin Edwards sent his oldest daughter to Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey, Ill. Not long after she was settled in, her mother wrote dryly, “I doubt not, you will often long to be at home, where you think perhaps you would not be obliged to study. Alas my child, if you had applied yourself a little more to your books when you were at home, you would now find it far less irksome, far more easy.”
“Boomerang” children – Long before the Great Recession of 2009 sent young adults back to living with their parents, it was commonplace for Springfield’s young adults to spend several years under their parents’ roofs. In fact, many young couples lived with their parents after marrying. Such was the case with the daughters of John T. Stuart, Stephen T. Logan, Ninian W. Edwards and Benjamin Edwards, just to name a few. While most moved into their own homes within a few years, Alice Edwards took things to the extreme: she and her husband lived with her parents for 19 years before moving out onto their own.
Erika Holst, a professional historian and curator of Edwards Place, is the mother of a one-year-old. Contact her at collections@springfieldart.org.
This article appears in Capital City Parent April 2013.
