History wasn't like that.
Sep. 2nd, 2015 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateMy child is being marketed too, quite effectively, because we'll get these books out of the library and then there are pictures of other books on the backs, and then she'll ask me to put them on hold, too. And so we ended up with a handful of American history stories that wouldn't otherwise have been on anyone's radar (two westward expansion, one white family & one black family, & an underground railroad one) and this is all very well except for the thing where writers tend to co-opt little bits of modern culture in ways that irritate me.
So, the underground railroad book (it's called Follow the Drinking Gourd, but then it's about a little white boy whose dad turns out to be an underground railroad conductor) starts off with bored little-white-boy fishing for geese with his apple core out the window from the church gallery & getting sent home while his parents and five siblings stay to finish the ceremony. And then (predictably) instead of going straight to his room, he decides to play in the hayloft & finds a family of slaves (Dad, Mom, boy, baby girl) being smuggled north. Ok, whatever, idealized family structures & everyone gets away together, and both father and boy are rather forthcoming in their, "shoot, you don't even know about *that*?" explanations. And then our young hero's father shows up and has him help hide the family in the hay wagon & ride along to the river, which I guess makes sense in terms of keeping the darn kid where he can keep an eye on him. Only then there's a scene with not-too-bright constables who are convinced that our hero is running away *with the hay wagon* so he won't get a whipping for the goose incident, after which the father has him take the wagon home while he rows the family across the river. And his mother feeds him & sends him to bed, and then his father gets home and goes to talk to him in his very own room, with (according to the illustrations) an awful lot of space in it, and I get all *argh* about the idea of an 8-or-10-ish boy with two brothers having his own private bedroom. Heck, most kids with five sibs *these* days don't get a room to themselves. Pre-civil-war, odds are he wouldn't have his own *bed.*
There's also the princess trend where reigning queens end up the primary caretaker for their children, and um, no. Being a queen is a full-time job, plus some, being a prince or princess is more job than most American kids see before they turn 16, and there is always going to be support staff. Your house is full of support staff, always, and private parent/child moments have to be slotted into complex schedules of public life & all the other stuff that needs done, and most of them aren't really private as we'd think of it. (see also: Brave... where are their attendant ladies???)
It is possible that I stop for plausibility footnotes the second or third time we read these things.
So, the underground railroad book (it's called Follow the Drinking Gourd, but then it's about a little white boy whose dad turns out to be an underground railroad conductor) starts off with bored little-white-boy fishing for geese with his apple core out the window from the church gallery & getting sent home while his parents and five siblings stay to finish the ceremony. And then (predictably) instead of going straight to his room, he decides to play in the hayloft & finds a family of slaves (Dad, Mom, boy, baby girl) being smuggled north. Ok, whatever, idealized family structures & everyone gets away together, and both father and boy are rather forthcoming in their, "shoot, you don't even know about *that*?" explanations. And then our young hero's father shows up and has him help hide the family in the hay wagon & ride along to the river, which I guess makes sense in terms of keeping the darn kid where he can keep an eye on him. Only then there's a scene with not-too-bright constables who are convinced that our hero is running away *with the hay wagon* so he won't get a whipping for the goose incident, after which the father has him take the wagon home while he rows the family across the river. And his mother feeds him & sends him to bed, and then his father gets home and goes to talk to him in his very own room, with (according to the illustrations) an awful lot of space in it, and I get all *argh* about the idea of an 8-or-10-ish boy with two brothers having his own private bedroom. Heck, most kids with five sibs *these* days don't get a room to themselves. Pre-civil-war, odds are he wouldn't have his own *bed.*
There's also the princess trend where reigning queens end up the primary caretaker for their children, and um, no. Being a queen is a full-time job, plus some, being a prince or princess is more job than most American kids see before they turn 16, and there is always going to be support staff. Your house is full of support staff, always, and private parent/child moments have to be slotted into complex schedules of public life & all the other stuff that needs done, and most of them aren't really private as we'd think of it. (see also: Brave... where are their attendant ladies???)
It is possible that I stop for plausibility footnotes the second or third time we read these things.