Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America
Bringing together an extraordinary richness of evidence—from letters, diaries, and other intimate family records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Philip Greven explores the strikingly distinctive ways in which Protestant children were reared in America. In tracing the hidden continuities of religious experience, of attitudes toward God, children, the self, sexuality, pleasure, virtue, and achievement, Greven identifies three distinct Protestant temperaments prevailing among Americans at the time: the Evangelical, the Moderate, and the General. The Protestant Temperament is a powerful reassessment of the role of child-rearing and religion in early American life.
... Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn, Jane N. Garrett, Helen Stokes Greven,
Michael G. Kammen, Elizabeth D. Kirk, Gerald F. Moran, Carol M. Petillo, and
Michael G. Vaught. In addition, Rhys Isaac and Warren I. Susman scrutinized one
of the late drafts of the manuscript with particular care and provided me with
invaluable commentaries. I wish to thank all of these individuals for their
encouragement and the candor with which they expressed their disagreements
and suggestions.
