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PARTISAN REVIEW
more or less
~iologically
determined . Parents have to take care of
their children for the advancement of their own genetic heritage.
Thus , she adopts a sociobiological position to defend what is essen–
tially an ahistorical view of the history of the family. This may seem
a curious position to be taken by an historian, but it becomes more
understandable when juxtaposed to the viewpoint of Gay, Rose, and
Auerbach : that modern culture can make no special claim to
humanity in the sphere of personal relations.
What is also significant about Pollock's book, for historians and
general readers of history alike, is her objection to Aries's method:
an imaginative reconstruction of the cultural elements of a particular
period, in which paintings, diaries, novels, court records, and a
variety of other sources are woven together to create a sense of the
mind of the people of an era. Pollock complains that sources used by
Aries are overwhelmingly secondary: moral and medical tracts, re–
ligious sermons, the views of contemporary experts, legislation,
painting. They cannot be relied upon to tell us what goes on in the
actual and mostly private relations of parents and children, since
they express the norms and ideals of public culture .
She therefore objects to the use of child advice literature to dis–
cover how children lived in earlier centuries . She argues that con–
temporary British and American parents do not ordinarily heed the
advice they read and that earlier generations were no different . Ifwe
want to know what parents and children actually
did,
rather than
what experts or theologians said parents or children
should
do, we
must rely on what Pollock considers more primary sources, namely,
diaries, memoirs and letters which record the actual behavior of par–
ents to children and children to parents.
We all know that there can be a gap between what people are
told or advised to do and what they, in fact, do. On the other hand,
it's hardly true that the world of childhood or of relations between
parents and children is exhausted by bits and pieces of actual behav–
ior. Parents and children inhabit larger cultural worlds composed of
books, paintings, popular manuals , popular tales , all the sorts of
material which Aries uses, and these elements enable parents and
children to give significance to the ongoing events of their daily lives.
Thus , even if parents do not always follow advice, such advice is
nonetheless an important element in attempting to understand the
world from which they must draw significant attitudes.
Pollock objects to Aries's method because it involves a "selective
use of material ," which permits him to use only that evidence which
