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REVIEWS
| A Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China. By Ping-chen Hsiung (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. xvi plus 351 pp. $70.00).
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| "Tender voyage" is a Buddhist image that aptly evokes the fragility and vulnerability of children, from birth to adolescence, captured in Ping-chen Hsiung's masterly study. Inspired by the work of Philippe Ariés and his critics, Hsiung's analysis is also intended to challenge European and North American scholarship on the history of childhood. She focuses on a crucial historical juncture in the late sixteenth century, linking important changes in childhood and childrearing to the broad social, economic, philosophical, and cultural shifts of the late sixteenth century, especially the expanding economy and the rise of urban print culture, which placed a premium on hard work: in scholarship for those eager to advance through the official examination system, in accounting and entrepreneurial skills for those moving into the expanding merchant class, in learning for elite women as mothers and mentors, and in physical labor and productivity for commoners, both male and female. |
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Hsiung identifies this historical shift with three changes in the "discourse" on children and childhood: a new emphasis on the importance of early childhood education and moral development; a positive view of strong, even punitive, childrearing sanctions; and an insistence that both girls and boys receive the same education in their early years (p. 107). These changes increased the importance of parental instruction (p. 111) and heightened the value of both father's and mother's personal attention to their offspring (p. 115). Fathers were particularly affected by this shift, struggling to balance their traditional authoritarian roles with the emotional opportunities opened by changing views of parenting. Parents responded to the new demand for educated brides who, as mothers, would give their children the "head start" so necessary to success in the competitive late imperial world. Accompanying this shift was an increased emphasis on "indoor, bookish occupations, leaving less time for physical and leisure activities" among the children of the elite, especially boys (p. 122). The "new domesticity" thus created, and the "competitive parenting" it inspired, frame Hsiung's narrative. |
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