Victorian Discipline

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Discipline for Children in Victorian Times

People lived crowded together in small spaces. They needed strong disciplinary measures to maintain order in the home. Children did not have any rights or protection under the law until later in the century. Parents could do what they pleased with their children, since they thought of them as their property. Children could be bought or sold at a whim: boys into a trade such as chimney sweeping, or girls into prostitution. The law treated children equally as harshly as adults. Once past the age of seven, children might be hanged for committing a crime. The theories vary greatly on how widespread these torturous types of treatment were.
Victorian parents were extremely concerned with the task of disciplining their children. They are reputed for being brutally severe in their efforts to "break the child’s will". This idea, which began to change later in the nineteenth century, stemmed from the theory that children were inherently wicked and must be trained to overcome the evil within. This notion of wickedness probably related to the biblical idea of Original Sin. Children should obey their parents unquestioningly, presumably as training for a healthy adulthood. The methods of punishment they often employed would certainly be considered abusive by late twentieth century standards.
Parents took quite literally the Biblical injunction: "Spare the rod and spoil the child"and. strove for strict control and dominance of their children:
They did not need to reason with children or explain their methods of punishment. Caning, the preferred method of corporal punishment could be begun as early as four or six years old. Sometimes parents substituted the whip. Physical punishment may even begin earlier.
It is likely children often did not even realize the reason for their punishment, it simply became an accepted part of their existence. Whipping seems to be an extreme method of punishment for such young children’s minor offenses.
Although whipping was the most common method of discipline, parents employed many tactics to gain control of their children. Probably due to the fact that food was sometimes scarce, parents often used it as a tool in disciplining their children. Parents expected children to be thankful for whatever food was put on their plate and to eat it eagerly. If a child did not care for a particular food, such as spinach, a parent might offer it at every meal, forcing the child to eat it or go hungry.
Parents probably wanted their children to realize that in life we must sometimes take the good with the bad.