Indulgent Parenting
In several poems, Pulter explores the implications of a parenting style that she calls “indulgent.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “indulgent” as “showing or ready to show favour or leniency; disinclined to exercise strictness, severity, or restraint” and “weakly lenient.” This definition relies heavily on the writings of male Protestant reformers, who used “indulgent” to describe a lack of parental discipline. Although they warn all parents against this flaw, some of these writers assume that mothers are particularly susceptible to it.
Pulter defines indulgence differently: as loving, selfless devotion to children that demonstrates godly behavior. In The Manucodiats (Emblem 5)71, Pulter identifies the bird-of-paradise’s protection of its young as a model for human parenting: “Let parents then learn here indulgency.” She represents indulgence as “natural affection,” which she claims is a holy act. Just as her cannibal emblem notes that “wisest creatures most indulgent be,” This Ostrich (Emblem 41)106 argues that “foolish creatures least indulgent be.” When read alongside her other emblems, Pulter’s cannibal poem contributes to a recurring defense of parental indulgence, and we might interpret this motif biographically. Pulter’s poetry mourns the deaths of several children. Tell Me No More [On the Same]11 vows to “deplore” the premature death of Pulter’s daughter Jane “all my life,” and Made When I Was Not Well51 describes its speaker as “moping,” “dull,” and devoid of “joys” following the death of another daughter Penelope. Pulter’s second emblem, which is undated but must have been written later, explains that eight of her fifteen children had died by that time. After experiencing so much loss, Pulter might have decided that the most important part of parenting is loving one’s children. She implies this perspective when she addresses another Jane elegy, Upon the Death of My Dear and Lovely Daughter J. P.10, to other “indulgent parents.”
Alternately, we might argue that Pulter’s explorations of parental indulgence engage with a male-dominated Protestant discourse that blames parents (especially mothers) for children’s failings. Two earlier emblem books by male authors are representative examples. First, Geoffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems includes a woodcut of a prisoner biting off the nose of an old woman, accompanied by a didactic poem. Its Latin title means: the indulgence of the parents is the bane of children. Second, George Wither’s emblem on a lamb provoked by a boy includes a section on indulgent parents.
Indulgentia parentum, filiorum pernicies
- A thief, condemned to die, to execution led:
- His woeful mother did behold, for sorrow almost dead.
- And whilst she kissed her son, whom she did tender dear:
- The toward child did kiss with teeth and off her nose did tear.
- Whereat, the standersby exclaimed at his act;
- Then quoth the thief, my master’s mark, I will defend the fact.
- My mother, in my youth, did with my faults dispense,
- And evermore did like me best when I did most offense.
- So that she was the cause that made me do amiss;
- For if she had correction used, I had not come to this.
- Wherefore I did revenge my wrong in what I might;
- In hope my fact shall mothers warn, that do behold this sight.
- For if the children steal and come unto the rope,
- It often is the parents’ fault, for giving them such scope.
- Although we know not a more patient creature
- Than is the lamb (or of less harmful nature),
- Yet, as this emblem shows, when childish wrong
- Hath troubled and provoked him overlong,
- He grows enraged, and makes the wanton boys
- Be glad to leave their sports and run their ways.
- Thus have I seen it with some children fare,
- Who, when their parents too indulgent were,
- Have urged them till their doting grew to rage,
- And shut them wholly from their heritage.
- Thus, many times, a foolish man doth lose
- His faithful friends and justly makes them foes.
- Thus froward husbands and thus peevish wives
- Do fool away the comfort of their lives,
- And, by abusing of a patient-mate,
- Turn dearest love into the deadliest hate;
- For any wrong may better be excused
- Than kindness, long and wilfully abused.
- But as an injured lamb provoked thus
- Well typifies how much it moveth us
- To find our patience wronged: So, let us make
- An emblem of ourselves, thereby to take
- More heed how God is moved towards them,
- That his long suff’ring and his love contemn.
- For, as we somewhat have of every creature,
- So we, in us, have somewhat of his nature;
- Or if it be not said the same to be,
- His pictures and his images are we.
- Let therefore his long-suff’ring well be weighed,
- And keep us, to provoke him, still afraid.
Many printed sermons in the period advise parents against immoderate doting or misplaced love directed to one’s children rather than to God. For minister William Gouge, indulgence is a major fault in parenting. He mentions it many times in Of Domestical Duties and dedicates two sections to the topic.
Of Parents’ Too Much Lavishness and Indulgency Upon Their Children
Others surpass as much in the excess, feeding them too daintily, attiring them too garishly, tending them too cockeringly [overindulgently], and letting them spend too much time in sport and play. Many and great are the mischiefs that follow thereupon, as:
1. They who are in their childhood daintily fed and too much pampered, besides that for the most part they are most sickly, they will in time grow so squeamish, and choice of meats, as their parents shall not know what to provide for them or when to give it them. The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; yea, if a stranger cometh to the table where such a child sitteth, he may soon observe that he hath been too daintily fed. If at first children be fed with ordinary moderate diet, they will afterwards both be in better health and liking, and also more contentedly and thankfully accept whatsoever shall be provided for them. But excess breedeth diseases both in body and mind.
2. Vanity in apparel doth also much corrupt young children, for there is in them even from the cradle a natural disposition to outward bravery. Now for parents to prank them up, what is it but to blow up the fire of that vanity and make it arise into such a flame as in time may much scorch the parents themselves, and utterly consume the children: and yet how usual a fault is this? How monstrously do many parents offend therein? What foolish fashion is used of the greatest swaggerers and lightest strumpets, which they will not bring their children unto, and that when their children are not able to discern betwixt stuffs or colors? What can this proclaim but parents’ pride and folly? Proud maids are many times the instruments of pranking up [dressing up ostentatiously] children (especially when they are little ones) more than is meet [suitable], but yet the blame lieth on parents for suffering it.
3. Tending children too cockishly maketh them too long children and too tender and oft altereth a good constitution of body. Some are so over-much tender of their children, as if a child never so little complain or refuse the meat (though for daintiness or fullness) the physician must presently be sent for, and the apothecary sent unto, and the child with supposed and apish kindness made much worse.
4. Too much sport maketh them wild, rude, unfit to be trained up to any good calling, and spendeth their spirits and wasteth their strength too much. Yet many parents care not how much time their children spend in sport and how little in learning. They think it dulls their children too much to be held to school or to any learning, whereas indeed too much play infatuates them more [makes them foolish], and learning would much sharpen their wits.
Contrary to this duty of correcting are two extremes:
1. Too much lenity.
2. Too much severity.
Many so cocker [indulge] their children, as they will suffer them to run into any misdemeanor rather than correct them. They cannot endure to hear their children cry, and therefore their children must be pleased in all their humors and evil desires. These parents bring shame to themselves and mischief upon their children, for God is oft forced to correct such. Heavy are God’s corrections and oft light [fall or descend upon] on parent and child both, as appeareth by the judgment on Eli and his sons; for such parents make themselves accessory to their children’s sins, yea also to the judgments laid upon their children. God sayeth of such parents that they honor their children above God. It is therefore a fond indulgency which maketh parents regard neither God’s honor nor their own or children’s safety.
Mothers for the most part offend herein, who are so far from performing this duty themselves, as they are much offended with their husbands if they do it. And to proclaim their folly to all the world, they cannot commit their children to a tutor or schoolmaster but with a straight charge that they correct them not.
John Donne’s sermons and Richard Ward’s religious essays include similar condemnations of parental indulgence:
The salvation of the parents hath so much relation to the children’s goodness, as that, if they be ill by the parents’ example or indulgence, the parents are as guilty as the children. Art thou afraid thy child should be stung with a snake, and wilt thou let him play with the old serpent, in opening himself to all temptations? Art thou afraid to let him walk in an ill air, and art thou content to let him stand in that pestilent air, that is made of nothing but oaths and execrations of blasphemous mouths round about him? [… W]e pay dear for our children’s damnation, by paying at first for all their childish vanities, and then for their sinful insolencies at any rate.
Some are so indulgent over their children that they cannot correct; they cannot check them. Certainly, children (like fields) are to be plowed, tilled, and sown betime […] and many parents are so enamored of their own children that they think none may be compared with them. Whence, first, their children become proud, and being proud, learn to contemn [scorn] and despise them. Or secondly, their children think them foolish thus to dote upon them. Or thirdly, their children being thus cockered [indulged], pampered, and doted upon, learn to disdain and reproach their parents. And thus through carelessness and too much indulgence, parents bring a curse upon their children, and their children (instead of a blessing) become a curse unto them. How great care then should parents have to educate and bring up their children in the fear and nurture of the Lord.