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Children and Childhood

"At the present time our city presents a most lively and animated appearance. . . . The low part of the town, which in the spring was almost destitute of inhabitants, is now thickly studded with houses and swarming with children," declared the Nauvoo Neighbor on 23 August 1843. Nauvoo was indeed swarming with children. The large families for which Mormons are noted were certainly in evidence in Nauvoo, but large families were not unique to the Saints. Most couples in the nineteenth century tended to have large families for two compelling reasons.

First, most couples did not know how not to have children. Not until about the time of the Civil War did the medical profession even begin to understand the physiology of human reproduction. The few courageous authors who had dared to discuss such matters had found their writings suppressed and themselves the objects of legal actions. It is not surprising, therefore, that the average woman knew almost nothing about conception. Second, people believed that " 'the more the merrier.' . . . our poor man counts each one of his half dozen or half score a blessing. . . . stout hands and active heads are the very things we need."

As a consequence of the need for extra workers, children in frontier families grew up very quickly. Starting at age four, the children started learning farm labor, working with animals, planting and harvesting, milking, butchering, and so on. "There was no time in the new country," one authority concluded, "for the prolonged infancy that existed in European society."

There was no concept of adolescence then such as there is now, either. Society today seems to allow a time-out stage for young people. Mandatory school attendance laws, child labor laws, and less need for the children to work at home-all give children several years to mature, develop talents, to play, and to date. That was simply not the case in Nauvoo.

[In Old Nauvoo

Grave of an infant near the Browning home on Main Street

Foreign visitors, especially, were surprised at the independence and maturity of American children. One traveler was astounded when a ten-year-old boy was sent off alone at night, driving a team of horses with a high carriage to travel thirty miles and execute a difficult commission. The observer noted that not even the mother was concerned over any possible dangers. Such early training, the visitor believed, bred early self-reliance. An Englishman, William Fergusson, who visited America about the time Nauvoo was abandoned, remarked, "There are no children in our sense of the term in America-only little men and women. . . . The merest boy will give his opinion upon the subject of conversation among his seniors; and he expects to be listened to and is."