Victorian liberalism is currently undergoing reappraisal by scholars in the disciplines of literature and history. Some have limited their discussion to the political party that formally bore the appellation Liberal in 1865. Others have focused on the liberal philosophical tradition, which encompasses such nineteenth-century figures as John Stuart Mill , Thomas Hill Green, Leslie Stephen , and Henry Sidgwick. Although historians and literary critics think and write about Victorian liberalism in varied ways, most would agree with the premise that āLiberalism is not a creed but a frame of mind ā (Morley 1917: p. 127). Thus, in recent years, this reconsideration of liberalism has extended to its lived dimensions. How did liberalism look and feel? How was it practiced? Yet despite the now burgeoning corpus of scholarship on the topic, only a handful of studies have addressed the implications of Victorian liberalism for intimate personal relations. Of these, most have focused on institutional homosocial relations in learned societies, the ancient universities, and Londonās clubland, or on the figuration of the household as a microcosm of the state in political theory. None have considered the relationship of parent and child.
In fact, there are relatively few scholarly monographs that take Victorian parenthoodāliberal or otherwiseāas its focus.1 Instead, parents and parenting have been considered as part of larger and very fine studies of domesticity and family life, femininity, masculinity, and childhood.2 If recent publications are any indication, however, parenting is beginning to receive due consideration.3 This book is a contribution to that effort as well as to the ongoing revaluation of Victorian liberalism.
Liberal Parenting
Liberal parenting is a capacious topic. Because we lack a history of the development of liberal parenting, my account could have considered continuity and change over several centuries. From its Enlightenment beginnings, liberal theory has conceptualized people as state citizens rather than monarchical subjects. As Barbara Arneil notes, this shift has important implications for the status of children. Under an absolute monarchy, adults and children are indistinguishable from each other since they are similarly subject to the sovereign head of state. āAs seventeenth-century theorists began to challenge this notion of absolute rule in favour of the citizen who consents to authority as the basis of political power,ā Arneil writes, āit became necessary to distinguish between those who have the rational capacity to consent to political authority and those who do notā (2002: p. 70). Like women, slaves, or servants, children were believed to lack the reasoning capacities necessary to be citizens. However, in contrast to these groups, children would potentially develop into citizens if parents provided them with opportunities to cultivate their reasoning faculties.
The child was central to John Lockeās Two Treatises of Government, which is often considered to be a foundational text of what we now call liberal theory. In this work, Locke rejects the political patriarchalism defended by political theorist Robert Filmer. According to Lockeās characterization of Filmerās position, āMen are born in subjection to their Parents, and therefore cannot be free. And this Authority of Parents, he calls Royal Authority, Fatherly Authority, Right of Fatherhoodā (1690/1988: p. 144, emphasis in original). In contrast to the hierarchy of subjectionāthe people to the king, the family to the fatherāthat characterizes Filmerās position, Locke insists on the emergence of a rights-bearing individual suffused by rational thought. In Lockeās view, a child is simply the imperfect version of a rational and autonomous adult. āEducation,ā Locke contends, is therefore ā[t]he first part then of Parental Power, or rather duty,ā although he acknowledges that this responsibility may be met by a father placing āthe Tuition of his son in other handsā (1690/1988: p. 313). Asserting that the mind of a child is a blank slate (tabula rasa), Locke argues that parents are responsible for educating their offspring to one day govern themselves through reason and, thereby, to inhabit the world of men. For Locke, parental authority, which has as its primary aim to cultivate the childās reasoning faculty, stems from the fatherās and motherās duty to careānot from Godāand is limited to the stage of immaturity and dependency through which children must pass in order to reach the state of equality.
A history of the development of liberal parenting might also consider Jean-Jacques Rousseauās quite different conception of the parentāchild relationship. In Ćmile, Rousseau develops this idea of the parent-tutor as facilitator, who does not dictate what a child should learn, but rather permits a significant degree of autonomy for experiential learning. For Rousseau, the child is neither a blank slate nor an unfree entity to be liberated by reason. Rather, the child has its own capacities for apprehending and understanding the world, and it should be the purpose of education to draw these out more fully. In this way, the child will learn to trust oneās own judgments, based on individual experience, rather than defer to the authority of an instructor.
Any study of liberal parenting would, of course, include the work of John Stuart Mill , whose views on the matter were shaped in part by the extraordinary education he received at the hands of his father. In On Liberty , Mill sought to delineate the proper division of responsibility for educating children between parents and the state. āHardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the father), after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards others and towards himself,ā Mill acknowledges (1859/1977: pp. 301ā2). Yet fathers often insisted on their unequivocal right to educate their children in the manner that they saw fit or not to educate them at all. This was one of several āmisplaced notions of libertyā that Millās essay sought to confront (1859/1977: p. 304). For Mill, the refusal to educate oneās child or to do so in a desultory manner was nothing less than a āmoral crimeā (1859/1977: p. 302) that the state should not abide. Although Mill acknowledges that the state has an interest in educating its citizens, he stops short of calling for it to provide compulsory education out of a concern that such an effort would produce a homogenous citizenry. He nevertheless argues that the state has a responsibility to establish the minimum standard to which each childāregardless of whether the instruction he or she received was secular or religiousāshould be educated. āIf the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education,ā Mill insists, it might save itself the trouble of providing oneā (1859/1977: p. 302). Parents could, therefore, choose the form of instruction that they preferred, including religious schooling, so long as children āwere taught other thingsā mandated by the state (1859/1977: p. 303). For those parents who cannot afford the fees associated with educating their children, the state should provide relief in the form of grants or, if necessary, defray the cost altogether.
Depending on the historical parameters established for a history of the development of liberal parenting, one might also consider the views of contemporary thinkers. In general, those writing today are less concerned with the forms education should take than in reflecting on the rights of parents and the responsibilities of the state in child rearing. William Galston has argued that āthe ability of parents to raise their children in a manner consistent with their deepest commitments is an essential element of expressive libertyā (2002: p. 102). An absence of constraints, imposed on parents by others, is, for him, a necessary condition for leading oneās life in accordance with the principles to which one firmly adheres. Eamonn Callan has similarly argued that, for many, parenting is one of the fundamental meaning-making activities of oneās life. The way in which a father or mother chooses to parent is an expression of their deepest values and beliefs. Callan therefore argues that it is best classified under the freedom of conscience principle: it is āas important as any other expression of conscience, and the freedom to organize and sustain the life of the family in keeping with our own values is as significant as our li...