Robert Seeberger wrote:
> It wasn't really like that, and I would agree with your statement. Our
> experience was that the older children would play with the younger ones,
> teach them things such as speech, silly kid songs, and things *not* to do.
> With that kind of play occuring, mom only had to keep an ear on the kids
> while she did other things. I might note that this is the standard that has
> held for thousands of years, and actually works pretty well.
>
> Of course this is pretty broad as a statement, and there are lots of special
> circumstances that could be addressed, but this is the way things generally
> have worked on both the Catholic and the Baptist sides of my family.
> (BTW the previous post concerned itself with the Baptist side of the
> family.)
The way you describe the older children helping with the younger children
is like what I heard about my great-grandfather's family. Once you
reached a reasonable age, when the next baby was born, it was your job to
keep an eye on it and entertain it, while the mother's job was to take
care of feeding it, diapering it, dressing it, etc. My great-grandfather
would sit cross-legged in the foot of the cradle and rock it to keep his
baby sister Carrie calm, and read while he was doing it. (I think Carrie
may have been the youngest, so he would have been the youngest that did
this. There were over 10 children in the family.)
Julia
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