In class Monday we talked about how papers regarding age might have to define age. A tricky thing considering different life expectancies, different accepted norms for age groups, and the events surrounding them. According to Edmund Drago, "It seemed the children were aging a year each month." (Drago 2). This is important to note because in todays society we see children as a somewhat protected class of citizens. We shelter them from worries as best we can, we try to hide the state of our finances, make sure they don't injure their self, provide a hug or shoulder to cry on during times of emotional grief and so on. However, when these children's parents and siblings were dying in the front lines in the worst kind of war, they often had to fend for their selves. Images that todays children would never be permitted to see even on television were occurring in Civil War children's homes as the wounded were brought in off the field of battle.
I believe I will make clear at the start of the paper that this paper will be about biological age and not the age of a child's emotional state. For these children had no doubt grew more emotionally by 1865 than many college seniors have. It is important to stress their biological age versus cognitive/emotional age because these children were dealing with hardships that forced them to mature quickly cognitively. These children had their youthful ignorance, or innocence, stolen from them by the ravagings of war.
Drago, Edmund L. Confederate Phoenix: Rebel Children and Their Families in South Carolina. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
I agree with your turn to biological age regardless of emotional age; such a thing would be full of so much historical subjectivity as to render your paper clumsy, and this is by far a more simple solution.
ReplyDeleteYou may wish to also consult a book just on family and social life in the late 19th century, or a regular book on children to gain definitions. The only reason that I mention this is that your civil war sources will always render age differently, as your primary source quote shows above, due to the hardships of war.that way you can use biological age, but also be defining it according to what society perceived when they joined.
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