‘If You Love Me You Will Redeeme Me’: Strategies of Childhood in Richard Frethorne’s Letters Home

Conceptualising childhood as a relational status: parenting adult children in sixteenth-century England

“…Younger children were able to make use of characteristics associated with childhood to influence their parents to listen to their grievances, for example crying and other physical suffering. 71 Bassingbourne's letter demonstrates that adults could continue to draw on childhood signifiers in order to elicit a similar response from their parents. Although not admitting to crying, expressing vulnerability and shame was a reminder to parents of their continued responsibilities.…”