Why is The Arаbiаn Nights described аs a cоllectiоn shaped acrоss cultures and centuries?
1In preindustriаl fаmilies, . . . а gооd index оf neglect and indifference is found in journals kept by local doctors. 2All of these doctors complained about parents leaving their infants and young children alone and untended for much of the day. 3Rashes and sores from unchanged swaddling clothes afflicted nearly all infants. 4Repeated accounts tell of children burning to death because they were left too close to an open hearth, and reports of unattended infants being eaten by barnyard pigs are frequent. 5In the part of France where silkworms were raised, a peasant proverb acknowledged that children were neglected during the busy season: “When the silkworms rise, the kids go to paradise.” 6Indeed, throughout Europe, rural infants were most likely to die during the harvest season, when they were most neglected. 7Even when parents were around their infants, they ignored them. 8Mothers rarely sang or talked to their infants when they tended them, nor did they play games with them as the children grew older. 9In fact, mothers didn’t even refer to children by name, calling a child “it” or, in France, “the creature.” . . . 10Because of the high rates of infant mortality, it might be understandable that parents were somewhat reluctant to form intense emotional bonds with their babies. 11But in some parts of France, parents typically did not attend funerals for children younger than 5, and there is widespread evidence that infant deaths often caused little if any regret or sorrow. 12Instead, parents often expressed relief at the deaths of children, and many proverbs reflected this attitude. 13Moreover, dead and even dying infants were often simply discarded like refuse and were frequently noticed “lying in the gutters or rotting on the dung-heaps.” 14Large numbers of legitimate infants whose parents were still living were abandoned outside churches or foundling homes. 15Some scholars suggest that as many as half of the children abandoned in parts of France during the eighteenth century were abandoned by intact families.