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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Children page.

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  • A child is that which tells in the street what his parents say at home.
  • A child sees everything, looks straight at it, examines it, without any preconceived idea; most people, after they are about eleven or twelve, quite lose this power, they see everything through a few preconceived ideas which hang like a veil between them and the outer world.
  • Children should be seen and not heard - Unknown
  • I don't dislike children, I just don't particularly want to be around with them a lot. Problem is, neither do their parents. ~ Bill Maher
  • If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
  • Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
  • People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
  • Sunt pueri pueri et pueri puerilia tractant.
    • Children are children and children do childish things
    • Unknown
  • The best inheritance a person can give to his children is a few minutes of his time each day.
  • The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
  • The greatest prejudice that exists in the modern world, the only one almost universally accepted, is the prejudice against children.
  • The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.
  • There is very little you can beat into a child, but no limit to what you can hug out of it
  • There's not a man in America who at one time or another hasn't had a secret desire to boot a child in the ass.
  • Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.
  • You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.
  • Children are expensive to raise. If you can't afford one, take an aspirin...and hold it between your knees.
  • Insanity is hereditary; you can get it from your children.
  • If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

Two conflicting organisational elements

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Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Currently, most quotes on the subject are entered alphabetical by author. But, an entire book was excerpted as a section, and rather than integrating these, they were left separate. This is discordant, and should be remedied. 204.62.118.242 17:24, 29 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Draft

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Latest comment: 2 months ago13 comments1 person in discussion
Adverse childhood experiences are associated with increased risks of every major cause of death in adulthood. ~ Susan Hillis -- quote not in body of article Ficaia (talk) 18:06, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
  • The children also will frequently tell me ─ for instance, on television, I have to listen to it with my own children occasionally and I am aghast, / "My God, how can you stand such things, children?" / They say, "Mom, don't you know it is only television, it is not real." / In my opinion it is the same thing about these comics.
  • I would expose children to these comics an [sic.] see what the result was. / Now, if you want to ask me what I think the result would be I think it would be minimal. I think that many of the children would be bored with them, I think that many of the children would refuse to read them and the more sophisticated would say, "So what, I have seen stuff like that before." / Mr. BEASER. But you do not actually know, Doctor? / The CHAIRMAN. You are talking about normal children, though? / Dr. BENDER. There is no such thing as a normal child. / The CHAIRMAN. There is not? / Dr. BENDER. No. / The CHAIRMAN. That is your medical opinion? / Dr. BENDER. That is my medical opinion.
  • Lauretta Bender, Testimony of Dr. Lauretta Bender, Senior Psychiatrist, Belleveu Hospital Newy York, N.Y. (unsourced/unverified transcript) (November 29, 2019) [The context and precise nature of this testimony-type content are unknown.]
  • Every age and degree of understanding should have its proper measure of discipline. With regard to boys and adolescents, therefore, or those who cannot understand the seriousness of the penalty of excommunication, whenever such as these are delinquent let them be subjected to severe fasts or brought to terms by harsh beatings, that they may be cured.
  • The Bible sees children as a great blessing. Thus, when God blesses Abraham, the blessing is for the land of Israel and children, and that blessing is repeated to Isaac and Jacob. Infertility, on the other hand, is portrayed as a curse that affects all of the patriarchs and matriarchs, at least for a time. It is the source of both anxiety and tension for a couple, as articulated perhaps most graphically in the testy exchange between Jacob and Rachel, when Jacob has had children with Leah but not with Rachel: “Rachel said to Jacob, ‘Give me children or I shall die.’ Jacob was incensed at Rachel and said, ‘Can I take the place of God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?”
    Having children not only obeys the Torah’s first command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” but also increased adults’ maturity. The Rabbis recognized this in a very interesting ruling, according to which only people with children of their own were eligible to serve as judges in capital cases. Only such people, the Rabbis seem to be saying, can know the true value of life – both the life of the alleged perpetrator and the life of the victim.
  • Even though fathers had considerable duties with regard to their children, and children has significant duties with regard to their parents as well, there were limits to what parents could expect of their children. Parents were not allowed to have sexual relations with their children or grandchildren. Some biblical sources allow and even encourage parents to strike their children when they misbehave, as part of the parent’s duties to educate their children while other urge parents to “Educate the child according to his ways.” The debate in Jewish sources about parents hitting children has continued through the Middle Ages to our own time. The Talmud, though, says this: “If you must strike a child, hit him/her with the sting of a shoe,” and the bulk of the Jewish tradition was against hitting children to discipline them.
  • In ancient Roman law, children were considered the property of the father. After seeing his newborn children, a father could choose not to accept them, in which case they were "exposed"--literally left outside, to die or to be taken in by a compassionate stranger. If a stranger chose to, he or she could rescue and take in a child abandoned this way (the stoic philosopher Epictetus did this); but the choice of life or death lay with the father of the house. Female infants were the most frequent victims of this practice.
    In contrast to this, children were usually important in the New Testament: they are brought forward to Jesus, for his blessing; and John the Forerunner "leaps" in Elizabeth's womb at Mary's greeting.
  • I examined what Scripture had to say about children. The witness of the Word was overwhelming! Every verse that spoke about children spoke of them as only and always a blessing (Ps 127; 128). There was no proverb that cautioned about the expenses of a child outweighing his worth. There was no blessing pronounced over the man or woman who had perfect spacing between children, or the couple who had the right number of childless years before shouldering the burden of children, or the husband and wife who had planned each conception. These were thoughts I had learned from the media, my public school and my neighborhood, but they bad no foundation in the Word of God.
    Fertility, in Scripture, was presented as something to be prized and celebrated rather than as a disease to be avoided at all costs. And though I could find no verse speaking negatively about people with small families, there was no question that larger families showed an outpouring of greater favor from God, according to a variety of passages. God was the One who opened and closed the womb, and, when he gave life, it was seen only as a blessing. After all, God’s desire from faithful marriages was “godly offspring” (Mal 2:15). Children were described as “arrows in the hand of a warrior . . . blessed is the man whose quiver is full..” Who would go into battle with only two or three arrows when he could go with a whole quiver-full?!
  • Christians are trained to received and welcome children into the world. They represent a continuing commitment to live as a historic people. The vocation of marriage derives its intelligibility from a couple's willingness to be open to new life. It is a test of the validity of a marriage union and love, that the union is open to creation of another. The Christian prohibition of abortion is the negative side of the positive commitment to welcome new life into their community. For Christians there can be no question of the fetus being a human being. The fetus is nothing less than God's continuing creation that is destined in hope to be another citizen of his kingdom. The Christian hope is that life will and does continue to begin time after time. The role of being a parent, even for the childless, is a responsibility shared by everyone in the Christian community. From the world's perspective, children are a drain on our material and psychological resources. From the Christian perspective, there is no more profound political act than taking the time for children. It is an indication that God, not man, rules this existence. Christians should be concerned about developing forms of care and support for children, the absence of which makes abortion such a necessity. The woman pregnant and carrying the child need not be the one to raise it. Christians must be ready to receive and care for any child.
  • The old law had a different ideal of blessedness, for therein it is said: Blessed is he who has seed in Zion and a family in Jerusalem: and Cursed is the barren who bears not: and Your children shall be like olive-plants round about your table. Riches too are promised to the faithful and we are told that there was not one feeble person among their tribes. But now even to eunuchs it is said, Say not, behold I am a dry tree, Isaiah 56:3 for instead of sons and daughters you have a place forever in heaven. Now the poor are blessed, now Lazarus is set before Dives in his purple. Now he who is weak is counted strong. But in those days the world was still unpeopled: accordingly, to pass over instances of childlessness meant only to serve as types, those only were considered happy who could boast of children. It was for this reason that Abraham in his old age married Keturah; Genesis 25:1 that Leah hired Jacob with her son's mandrakes, Genesis 30:14-16 and that fair Rachel— a type of the church — complained of the closing of her womb. Genesis 30:1-2 But gradually the crop grew up and then the reaper was sent forth with his sickle.
    • Jerome, Letter 22, p.21; as qtd. in "CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)", ‘’New Advent’’, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. -- Religion and children
  • that kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. And it worries me greatly that today’s children can recognize 100 corporate logos and fewer than 10 plants.
  • The Negro constitutes half the poor of the nation. Like all poor, Negro and white, they have many unwanted children. This is a cruel evil they urgently need to control. There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted. That which should be a blessing becomes a curse for parent and child. There is nothing inherent in the Negro mentality which creates this condition. Their poverty causes it. When Negroes have been able to ascend economically, statistics reveal they plan their families with even greater care than whites. Negroes of higher economic and educational status actually have fewer children than white families in the same circumstances.
  • “God gave this blessing to the human race as a whole. He does not give it to everyone. Some couples are barren, and their earnest prayers for children are not fulfilled. Others, like the apostle Paul, are called to life without marriage.
  • If Genesis 1:28 were a ‘command’ that applied to every individual, then Paul would have been disobedient in his apostolic singleness. Paul and everyone else would be obligated to pursue marriage and to order their marriages to produce many descendants.
  • Sexual play was a regular practice among the children [of the Marquesas Islands] from the earliest period. The adult attitude toward it, if not one of active encouragement, was at least that of mild amusement. [...] Regular intercourse began before puberty with patterns of group sexual play, two or three girls in the gang serving a number of boys in rapid succession with the other boys looking on. Occasionally there were individual affairs. Sexual techniques were learned through imitation of the adults. [...] Homosexuality was present in the form of mutual masturbation, but I have no data as to its frequency. [...] The gap between adults and children was such that it was impossible for an adult to win the child's confidence. Relations between them were amiable but entirely dissociated.
  • The next day [in the Bay of Taiohaia, in one of the Sandwich Islands], as soon as it was light, we were surrounded by a still greater multitude of these people. There were now a hundred females at least; and they practised all the arts of lewd expression and gesture, to gain admission on board. It was with difficulty I could get my crew to obey the orders I had given on this subject. Amongst these females were some not more than ten years of age. But youth, it seems, is here no test of innocence; these infants, as I may call them, rivalled their mothers in the wantonness of their motions and the arts of allurement.
  • The diligent rearing of children is the greatest service to the world, both in spiritual and temporal affairs, both for the present life and for posterity. Just as one turns young calves into strong cows and oxen, rears young colts to be brave stallions, and nurtures small tender shoots into great fruit breeding trees, so must we bring up our children to be knowing and courageous adults, who serve both land and people and both to prosper.
  • Give me a child till he is seven years old, and I will make him what no one will unmake.
    • This version of the quote is cited by classicist W.L. Newman, in response to a portion of Aristotle's Politics. Translating a portion of Aristotle's Greek, Newman writes

      'for whatever we first have to do with, we like better than anything else,' so that if iambi and comedy are witnessed in youth, they will be among the things liked best. Aristotle has before him Plato Rep. 378 D... [extensive quoting of that Greek]. Compare Hor. Epist. I. 2. 69 and familiar sayings like 'on revient toujours à ses premiers amours' [one returns always to his first loves] and 'the child is the father of the man.' [He continues, quoting:] 'The Jesuits used to say, "Give me a child till he is seven years old, and I will make him what no one will unmake"' [citing] (Miss E. Welldon in the Cheltenham Ladies' College Magazine [ca. 1861], No. 18, p. 179). We may also explain in this way the tendency of men, as they grow old, to become 'laudatores temporis acti.' [praisers of time past]...

    • Newman, W.L., The Politics of Aristotle: With an Introduction, Two Prefactory Essays and Notes Critical and Explanatory, Vol. III [Two Essays; Books III, IV, and V—Text and Notes] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902 [1887]), page= 495
    • Or, Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man. Richardson, Janice; Elizabeth Milovidov & Roger Blamire, Bullying: Perspectives, Practice and Insights (Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe, 2017), p. 157 = Aristotle is credited with having said 'Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man', an adage that was later taken up by Frances Xavier, becoming a central pillar of Jesuit education.}}
    • Saint Francis Xavier,[2]<ref>Francis Xavier was a companion of Ignatius of Loyola, and among the original seven Jesuits taking vows of poverty and chastity with him in 1534, at wikipedia:Montmartre. See Attwater, Donald 1981 / 1965 A Dictionary of Saints Middlesex, England Penguin Books 141, from an earlier expression of Aristotle

“When Children Became People: the birth of childhood in early Christianity” (2005)

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Tangential; extracts may work in Religion and children Ficaia (talk) 18:06, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Odd Magne Bakke, “When Children Became People: the birth of childhood in early Christianity”, translated from Norwegian by Brian McNeil, Augsburg Fortress Minneapolis, MN, (2005)

  • In the field of history, the publication of Philippe Aries’s study in 1960 was fundamental. His thesis, that it was not until after the Renaissance that one started to consider or realized that childhood constituted a particular stage in the development of a human being, has rightly been disputed. In spite of this, a lasting value of Aries’s study is its contribution to shaping awareness of the fact that historical periods of the past could have had totally different presuppositions about childhood than our own, and that it is of vital importance to uncover these in order to give an adequate interpretation of the conception of children.
    • pp.2-3
  • In the field of systematic theology, Dawn DeVries has remarked, in an article published in 2001, that “until very recently” this theological discipline “in the twentieth century has been largely silent on the question of children.”
    • p.3
  • A number of books and articles deal with issues related to the question of children and childhood in the early church, for examples on expositio (exposure of children), orphans, infant baptism and upbringing . However, only a few publications focus on the way in which children were understood and how they were treated in general. The fact that nearly all these studies were published in the last decade is a clear indicator, as suggested above, of growing scholarly interest in this subject.
    • p.4
  • As the history of research shows, studies on children and childhood in early Christianity are beginning to see the light of day. However, though the studies published up to now provide illuminating discussions of various aspects of this topic, only the work by William A. Strange, and partly the essay by Gillian Clark combine several perspectives, and thus seek to give a general account of how Christians in the early church thought about children and how children were treated. I have already expressed my substantial agreement with these finding, but I have pointed out that many important aspects related to children and childhood receive only a superficial treatment, while some go virtually unmentioned in these work; besides this, only a relatively brief section of Strange’s book deals explicitly with the post-New Testament period. This means that we still need a book offering a comprehensive examination of children and childhood in early Christianity.
    • p.9
  • The child symbolized the absence of logos, something reflected in the etymology of the word that designated children: nepioi in Greek and infantes in Latin, that is, “not speaking.” Children’s lack of the ability to communicate in an adult manner meant that they were defined as standing outside the rational world of adults.
    • pp.15-16
  • The idea that children lack reason occurs in many sources from the time of Homer to that of Cicero. In view of the great importance Plato ascribes to true knowledge as a presupposition for correct ethical development, it is not surprising that it is precisely this philosopher who has most to say about the various ways in which children’s lack of reason finds expression. He claims that children have little knowledge; they are “gullible” and easily persuaded, they are able to understand only the simplest things and they talk nonsense and make unrealiable judgments. When children yield to their wishes and desires they give yet another proof of their limited possession of logos. Along with slaves, women and members of the lower classes, children form that group of human beings in whose lives desires, pleasures, and pains have the greatest place. Plato writes about “the mob of motley appetites and pleasures and pains (epithumai kai hedonai te kai lupai) one would find chiefly in children and women and slaves and in the rabble of those who are freemen in name.” These “pleasures” include music and sweet things-he notes that you can get a baby to stop crying by putting a piece of honeycomb in its mouth. All young creatures are by nature “fiery, they are unable to keep still either body or voice, but are always crying an leaping in disorderly fashion”. Similarly, Aristotle claims that children are more quick-tempered, greedy, and wrathful than adults. Childhood is that stage in life where the appetite for “pleasure” is strongest. These manifestations of children’s lack of logos led the classical philosophers to find a comparison with animals appropriate; indeed, Plato asserts that of all animal, it is the child who is “the most intractable; for in so far as it, above all others, possess a fount of reason that is as yet uncurbed, it is a treacherous, sly and most insolent creature.”
    • p.16
  • Plato frequently groups children together with other marginal actors in classical society: women, slaves, and animals. Aristotle does the same, emphasizing that there is a physical similarity between women and children in that neither of them has semen; that animal have the same relationship to human beings as children do to adults; and that both animals and children are inferior to adults, in the same way that stupid and foolish men are inferior to goo and wise men. One consequence on such ideas is that the opinions of children were seen as of no more consequence than those of animals. No human being in possession of his rational faculties would choose to live with the limited capacity for rational thought that one finds in a child, or to return to childhood once one had left it behind.
    • pp.16-17
  • One of the most popular Greek adages says: “Old men are like children once more.” This reference to old persons’ mental incapacities reflects the very common association of children with the lack of reason. Similarly, children and childish conduct-as in the phrase, “Not even a child would deny that!”-were used as symbols of foolish and irrational opinions and conduct: other people’s behavior and attitudes were criticized by being called childish. In rhetoric, calling someone a “boy” was perceived as a grave insult. Antony called Octavian a boy when he fought on the side of the senate in the civil war in 43 B.C.E., and this wounded Octavian so profoundly that he issued a decree forbidding anyone to speak of him in this way. When Cicero defended Octavian against this and other charges, he said: “That is certainly a word which we apply to a particular age-group, but hardly to be used by someone who makes a boy a present of his own stupidity as a source of glory.” Children were associated with stupidity: ‘’pueritia amentia’’.
    We find similar attitudes in other thinkers influenced by Stoicism-for example, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. Children were employed above all as a symbol of the irrationality to be found in adults who had not studied philosophy, on the grounds that children were not capable of discovering by means of reasoning that which is ethically right, and at most could learn by heart a basic ethical principle or rule.
    • p.17
  • Children were not only considered to be weak in the sense that they lacked logos. The Romans held that they were physically weak, particularly vulnerable, and exposed to sickness. When he bear in mind the high mortality rate among children, this view is not surprising.
    • p.18
  • Pliny obviously finds it paradoxical that the creature who is to rule over the other creatures should begin his life in a state of weakness and helplessness, and he does not attempt to conceal his contempt and lack of esteem for this phase in human life. Naturally, his reflections imply that the child has the potential to grow out of the weakness and those other qualities that he regards as negative. Aristotle says that a child is not complete and whole, but attains this state only when it grows up and is formed in keeping with conduct appropriate to noble adult behavior. Cicero made the well-known observation that it is difficult to find any reason to praise a child for its inherent qualities. It deserves praise only on account of the potential it has to become something in the future, that is, an adult human being with the qualities characteristic of adulthood: ”The thing itself cannot be praised, only its potential.” Although these words refer in context to the child’s capabilities as a rhetorician, we can in many ways take it as a general expression of the way classical antiquity saw and evaluated children’s qualities.
    • p.19
  • Although children’s qualities tended to be portrayed in negative terms, that is, as a counterpart to the positive qualities associated with the free male urban citizen, we do find examples of positive descriptions of children too. Sometime, they are described as “sweet.” We also note a tendency, especially in Greek antiquity, to think that small children represent a natural state of innocence, since they have performed neither good nor bad actions. However as we shall see, this characteristic of children attracted much less interest and attention among pagans than in the Christian tradition. Nor were children used as positive paradigms in order to persuade adults to imitate this quality.
    • p.21
  • In the philosophical tradition, children were portrayed, along with other weak groups, as the negative counterfoil to the free male urban citizen. Children lack reason, or at best have a limited measure of reason. They also lack the physical strength and courage that are typical of men (or at least of the ideal man). This means that children are portrayed as negative symbols or paradigms for adult conduct.
    • pp.21-22
  • Our source material is far from furnishing a complete picture of how Christians in late antiquity viewed children’s nature, characteristics, and qualities, but we can reconstruct certain aspects of this picture. We have seen how Jesus’ saying about the child as paradigmatic citizen of the kingdom of God was interpreted. According to the fathers, Jesus used small children as examples because they are simple, innocent and pure in a moral sense. This means that they are not sexually active; they have not yet developed sexual desire; they are not plagued by anger and grief; and they are indifferent to the wealth and positions that are associated with honor and status in this world. Besides this, children obey their parents. It is primarily in the Eastern fathers-Origen, John Chrysostom, and especially Clement of Alexandria-that we find such ideas, but we also find in Tertullian the idea that the child is taken as a model because it is not plagued by sexual desire.
    • p.104
  • We must, however, emphasize that the fathers attribute such qualities to small children. As they grow older, the passions take shape. According to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, this development is analogous to the emergence of the reason and of speech (logos). At the same time, the reason is a necessary presupposition, if one is to be able to choose and to resist desire. It is not clear at what age the child leaves behind an existence of simplicity and purity, but it appears that Origen believes that something happens to the child when it reaches the age of four or five, while John of Chrysostom limits the phase of innocence to the first years of a child’s life.
    • pp.104-105
  • As I have indicated, Clement and Origen presuppose a connection between the emergence of the reason (logos) and the growth away from innocence, while also affirming that, if desire were to be overcome, reason I the necessary instrument. We also find a connection between reason and desire in John Chrysostom, but his approach is different, since he believes that the passions are present in the child before the reason emerges, and that the child is tyrannized by ” all the passions (pathos)” precisely because it lacks rationality. This is why he normally employs children and their characteristic qualities as negative paradigms, unlike Clement, he generally reflects a positive evaluation of children’s qualities and invariably employs children and the conduct associated with them as positive examples.
    The idea that infants are innocent, or morally neutral, is found consistently in all the patristic material I have studied, until a clear break occurs among Western theologian at the beginning of the fifth century. Although Eastern theologians agreed with the Western tradition, which emphasized that Adam’s sin had consequences for his posterity, and some even came close to affirming or at least implicitly presupposing, the idea of original sin, this was asserted with much greater vigor by Augustine. In the course of the Pelagian controversy, where the fundamental issue concerned anthropology Augustine elaborated a theological defense of the doctrine of original sin and underlined that children enter this world with a nature already marked by original sin. Children are not innocent! Although Augustine does emphasize that physical limitations make it impossible for newborn children personally to commit sins, he claims that they are guilty because they are born with original sin. This sinful nature can be seen in the infant’s greed for its mother’s breast and in the jealousy it shows when other children lie at the mother’s or wet nurse’s breast. Accordingly, Augustine claims that when Jesus speaks of children as positive examples, he is referring only to their physical weakness, which makes it impossible for them to perpetrate sinful actions. The importance of the doctrine of original sin was that it allowed Augustine to make sense of the idea of God’s righteousness. His main argument is that if a child is without original sin and hence is innocent, god would be unjust when he punished it by means of sufferings. Punishment presupposes guilt. It follows that the child must be guilty, that is, must be born with original sin, for otherwise God would be afflicting an innocent person. That, in turn is unthinkable, since God’s righteousness is one of his fundamental qualities.
    • p.105
  • The church fathers see children as moral subjects. They are moral individuals who bear responsibility for their actions. This is particularly clear in Augustine, who affirms that the degree of responsibility grows in proportion to the child’s intellectual development It appears that he holds children to be fully responsible for their actions once they are about sixteen years old.
    The fourth- and fifth century fathers in East and West may differ on the question of original sin, but they agree that children are driven by passions or desires.. At the same time, they emphasize the child’s potential to be molded in keeping with Christian ideals, and John Chrysostom has an especially optimistic view of the possibilities of forming children, whom he compares to the sculptures in the artist’s hand. Chrysostom goes so far as to hold that it takes as little as to months to transform a child I accordance with Christian ideals. The premise for such a positive view of the possibility of change is the idea that the child is created in God’s image. When the parents educate their child in virtue that reflect God’s own being for example, kindness and forgiveness, they uncover God’s image in the child. We are not told explicitly what level of maturity must be reached before a child can internalize the Christian virtues, but it is clear that the process is in full swing by the time the child begins its schooling. Chrysostom exhorts parents to discipline their children “from the first,” since it is easier to form a child’s soul while it is still small. This indicates that the formation must start before the child begins school. Jerome assumes that a child of four or five has the necessary presuppositions for learning moderation.
    The study of the Bible was a central element in Christian education. According to Jerome, a seven-year-old child should read the scriptures and learn them y heart. The order that Jerome proposes for reading the individual books reflects his awareness that it is easier for children to absorb material related to rules of conduct and morality than more abstract theological texts. We find the same awareness that one must begin with children’s own presuppositions in John Chrysostom, who exhorts parents to teach their children biblical narratives from the beginning of their schooling. He assumes that seven-year-olds have reached the level of intellectual maturity necessary to grasp the relationship between rewards and merits and that they are able to relate the biblical material to their own lives.
    • p.106
  • Education requires one to see children as religious individuals who must develop their own individual relationship to God. Parents are urged to take their children with them to church while they are so small that it is still natural to hold their hands. According to Jerome, seven-year-old children should participate in a comprehensive and regular life of piety. In other words, children are religious subjects who must live their relationship to God both as individuals and in fellowship with adults.
    This, however, does not mean that the moral and religious individuality of children is acknowledged as something positive or valuable per se. It is a means toward the attainment of a future goal. The children’s moral and religious life attracts the church father’s attention primarily because the correct input in this area lays those foundations that allow the child at some future date to become an adult who believes and who lives in accordance with particular Christian ideals. Children are seen as “raw material” that must be worked on, so that they can be “attractive products” later on-adult person who have internalized the Christian faith and its consequences for a virtuous life. We find this line of thought more or less explicitly in all the patristic writers of the fourth and fifth centuries who I have studied, but it finds its clearest expression in Jerome who quotes Cicero’s explicit affirmation that a child deserves praise not so much because of what it now is, but rather because of what it will become.
    Our modern Western thinking, influenced by the insights of child psychology, may be inclined to say that such affirmation imply a negative view of children’s qualities and characteristics. This impression seems confirmed by the idea that children are tyrannized by passions which must be tamed (John Chrysostom) or that they are born with original sin (Augustine), since such notions supply the premise for the picture of children as “raw material”.
    • pp.106-107
  • [T]he apparently negative attitude toward children must be nuanced by other factors, such as the intensity of the debate about the salvation of children. Gregory of Nyssa composed a theological treatise that discusses why God permits the death of small children and what awaits them on the far side of the grave. Augustine emphasizes that Jesus died for babies too. His controversy with Pelagius about which of them represented the more “child-friendly” theology of the salvation of children is a clear indication that theologians were concerned about children’s eternal happiness. Children were seen as individuals with a dignity and a nature that made them (just as much as adults) the recipients of God’s salvation.
    A second factor, linked to this, is the emphasis that children are created in god’s image. In Eastern theology, represented by Gregory of Nyssa, this implies that the child shares in god’s life and that the goal of education is t sow the virtues in the child, so that its soul will be cleaned of consequences of the fall, and it can truly achieve that degree of sharing in God for which it was created. In a similar manner, John Chrysostom holds that when parents educate their child to a virtuous life, they uncover God’s image in it. Although Augustine goes further than the Eastern fathers in the dramatic consequences for the child’s nature, which he ascribes to the fall, he too emphasizes that the child is created in God’s image. The acknowledgement of this fact and of its implications for his own existence and life as a boy lead him to strikingly positive affirmations: “In a living creature such as this everything is wonderful and worthy of praise.” Even if it had been God’s will that he should not outlive his own childhood, Augustine would still owe him profound thanks. This fundamentally positive evaluation is connected to Augustine’s belief that God has created children in such a way that they can seek him and find him, but this does not diminish the strikingly positive character of his attitude to children and to their qualities, especially in the light of prevalent attitudes in his period. This means that Augustine combine the idea of original sin and of the child as a sinner with a basically positive assessment of children, based on the theology of creation.
    Third, the life and existence of babies had such a significance and dignity that theologians reflected on their suffering in the form of deformity, sickness, and death. Both Gregory of Nysssa and Augustine discuss the suffering and death of small children in relation to the idea of God’s righteousness. Their approaches to this question and the answers they offer may differ, but the very fact that these patristic writers devoted specific attention to the suffering of babies, and related this topic to fundamental characteristics of God’s own being, demonstrates that they thought the lives and fates of small children a matter worthy of their concern.
    • pp.107-108
  • A daughter who respects you while you’re alive is far better than a son who performs the rites and rituals after you’re gone.

More

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  • A minority current of medieval theology put a value on multiplying the number of human souls. Its most prominent exponent was Duns Scotus. Putting forward the thesis that “to want to procreate children” is good or bad depending on the circumstances, Scotus constructs an argument that would seem to favor limitless procreation: “through the procreation of offspring the city of supernatural citizens is restored in human nature; and to this end, human nature, as multiplied, is per se ordained; for to this end the All Highest has disposed it according to faith, in order to repair the fall of the angels” (‘’On the Sentences [Paris Report] 4.28’’). Taken literally, this proposition would seem to be, the more offspring, the bigger the population of heaven. The theme appears in some preaching: procreation is “to repair the fall of Lucifer in heaven.” St. Bernardine speaks of marriage as divinely ordained “to fill paradise” (The Christian Religion 48.1.1).
    This view of the purpose of marriage received its strongest official approval in a papal bull promulgated by Eugene IV at the Council of Florence, November 22, 1439, celebrating the reunion with the schismatic Armenians. The bull, Exultate Deo, enumerated and briefly described the sacraments. It said, “Through order the Church is indeed governed and multiplied spiritually; through matrimony it is corporally increased” (Mansi 31:1054). The contrast with holy orders was obviously of a neat, schematic kind. The bull is the medieval high-water mark of the theory of population increase as a value.
    The majority of theologians did not accept this view. Typical is St. Thomas, who spoke of “the multiplication of offspring to be educated to the service of God” as a purpose for marriage only for the polygamous patriarchs of the Old Testament (On the Sentences 4.33.1.2). Even among the minority, the emphasis on population was not made a direct objection to contraception. Nor did they press their view to the logical extreme of maintaining that the optimal endeavor would be to conceive as many children as possible provided that their baptism was assured. Against this logical extension stood the valuations put on virginity and on the welfare of the child. These factors, which checked even those theologians in favor of increasing the population of heaven, operated with still greater impact on the majority who remained unimpressed with this reason for procreation. Indeed, the stress laid on virginity and on the welfare of the child made is impossible for most thoughtful authors to urge that population as such was a value. An examination of the commitment to these counter value will show the strength of the forces working against the appeal to numbers for their own or heaven’s sake.
  • Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The Food and Agricultural Organization said that 18.8 million Afghans are unable to feed themselves every day. This number is set to rise to nearly 23 million by the end of the year. Nearly nine million people are close to starvation. At least one million children under five with severe acute malnutrition and 2.2 million children under five with moderate acute malnutrition need malnutrition treatment services. However, starvation is not the only issue faced by children. As UNICEF warns “Afghanistan was already one of the toughest places on earth to be a child. Right now, the situation is desperate.” The situation deteriorates quickly as the country is on a brink of famine.
    Recent weeks have seen yet another trend: families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories.
  • These experiences are not 'religious' in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not 'ineffable' in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. 'One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people'. The peak experience tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. 'For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience . . .
  • I'm feeling honored that I am being chosen as a Nobel laureate and I have been honored with this – this precious award, the Nobel Peace Prize. And I'm proud that I'm the first Pakistani and the first young woman or the first young person who is getting this award. It's a great honor for me. And I'm also really happy that I'm sharing this award with a person – with a person from India whose name is Kailash Satyarthi and his great work for child's right, his great work against – against child slavery.
  • Children are the most sweet burden of life.
    • Đuro Zrakić in novel Svi me vole, samo tata ne (1971) -- is this a published translation?
  • The fear that seeing naked people in some way harms children is not supported, however, by academic research. The small handful of studies on this topic in psychology and sociology have shown, instead, that children reared in an atmosphere containing family social nudity may benefit from the practice. If this is true, then proposed laws outlawing either social nudity in the home or children's participation at naturist (or nudist) settings are unjustified.
  • Even if they (Children) try to pluck it,
    the flower submits itself onto their hands.
    If it happens to prick their heels,
    the thorn scorns itself all its life.
The dream too thinks twice,
gets filtered to go soft
to be seated on children's eyes.
~ Suman Pokhrel
  • The dream too thinks twice,
    gets filtered to go soft
    to be seated on children's eyes.
  • Once positioned on their(children's) lips,
    even the scariest of words
    come out as a melodious lisp.
  • Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it's distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.
  1. ↑ Lisyansky, Yuri (1814). A Voyage Round the World: In the Years 1803, 4, 5, & 6. Bibliotheca Australiana. London, UK: John Booth. p. 67 [May 1804]. Retrieved on November 29, 2019. 
  2. ↑ See Newman (1902), op. cit.
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