Through the Keyhole: Dutch Child-Rearing Practices in the 17th and 18th Century: Three Urban Elite Families (review)

In writing this book, Roberts aims to shed light on child-rearing practices in three urban élite Dutch families. Using personal documents spanning a period of four generations, he describes how these families approached children’s physical, cognitive, affective and moral upbringing. In addition, he wants to test his results against work done by members of the orthodox school of family history (Ariès, Stone, Shorter, and others) and by members of the revisionist school (Pollock, Ozment, Macfarlane, and others).

After introducing the reader to some of these scholars’ conflicting views concerning child-rearing, Roberts sketches the history of the three families in the economic and political context of the 17^th and 18^th century Dutch Republic. Each of the following four chapters discusses one of the aspects of upbringing by repeating some of the debate and then examining the families’ views and practices over the course of four generations. The bulk of Roberts’ evidence comes from letters preserved in the three families’ archives, supplemented by a number of popular early modern Dutch moralistic and medical advice manuals. Each chapter ends with a short conclusion that recapitulates the main evidence, and in the Epilogue these are more or less repeated, again in separate sections, with some comparison to the orthodox and revisionist views.

This particular set-up leads to much reiteration of material, and although some of it is interesting, single anecdotal events are repeated again and again, exaggerating their importance. Yet, Roberts shies away from analysis: he makes no clear statements as to the significance of his evidence. By the time I reached the end of this book, I longed for a ringing conclusion that would bring together and fully analyze the different pieces of evidence, and contrast the results with the orthodox and revisionist views in a way that would highlight differences, similarities, as well as any unique aspects of Dutch élite child-rearing. Instead, listed under the same headings as before, Roberts repeats yet again what he has said twice before, and the book ends. It is left up to the reader to pull all the disparate parts together. The closest Roberts comes to an overall evaluation is in the beginning of the Epilogue where in exactly four sentences (one each on the physical, cognitive, affective and moral aspects of upbringing) he concludes that his evidence seems to support the revisionist historians’ views.

What about the evidence presented in this book? It is clear that Roberts worked his way through a vast amount of correspondence in order to come up with many pieces of information that illustrate élite Dutch child-rearing practices. At one level these pieces of evidence struck me as rather anecdotal. However, Roberts strengthens his case by presenting evidence over four generations so that he can show continuity or changes in child-rearing practices over time. That is also why, in the end, he is in a position to argue that his evidence for three Dutch élite families supports the revisionists’ views. While I would not argue with that conclusion, I also think that the evidence presented is not overwhelming. In other words, this book contributes some interesting additional information to the arguments made by the revisionists, but it does not break new ground.

Although I am delighted to see Dutch publishers and authors issuing and writing works in English, I am afraid that with this book, the publisher Verloren has reached a new low. It is clear that no English speaking editor has come anywhere near this manuscript, and the book is riddled with idiomatic and grammatical errors, many of which are not even consistently wrong. While some errors are amusing (“self-autonomy”, “disabolishment”, “abstination”), others are confusing or undermine Roberts’ argument (“reluctant” instead of “inclined”; “inconsequently” for “inconsistently”). Sentences are missing words, even in a quotation (p. 46); at other times there are too many words. And what to do...