Abstract
This study reconstructs the image of the ‘normal’ child in Ontario from 1867 to 1900. During this time period the ‘normal’ child was modeled after the idealized image of a bourgeois adult. The idealized bourgeois adult was the embodiment of Protestantism, industriousness, decency, and culture. Any deviation from this image usually meant delinquency, or lunacy, or both, on the part of the child and brought about jail-time or committal to asylums. A combination of religious, economic, political, and legal beliefs provided the conditions necessary for the emergence of this image. This reconstruction not only aims to contribute to the social history of ‘adolescence’ in Canada, but also it seeks to point out the historical variability of conceptions of adolescence normality and abnormality and, thereby, help to broaden the existing views of mental health and disorder.
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Barmaki, R. The Bourgeois Order and the ‘Normal’ Child: The Case of Ontario, 1867–1900. Int J Ment Health Addiction 5, 263–276 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-007-9080-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-007-9080-x