Member-only story
Mary Ellen Wilson: When Abused Children Had Fewer Rights Than Pets
In the U.S. animals had welfare rights long before kids
If you were a pet owner in the U.S. in the late 1860s, you had to be careful how you treated your furry friend: if you beat, neglected, or otherwise mistreated your animal, the newly formed ASPCA (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) had the right to take it away from you and issue you with a fine.
If the abuse was serious enough, you could even end up in jail.
Oddly enough, the same could not be said about beating, neglecting, or mistreating children: under English common law they were more or less considered the property of their father (pretty much the same way women were considered the legal property of their husbands) and could be treated as such.
Not only that, but hitting one’s offsprings was seen as the right and proper thing to do — the Christian thing to do, even: didn’t the Bible itself say “do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die” and “whoever spares the rod hates his son”?
Those were the principles most parents lived by, and brutal, relentless beatings were the norm at least until the late 1800s — and likely after, given that, in the United States alone…
