By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority

by Holly Brewer

In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. Thus elite children could designate property or serve in Parliament, while children of the poorer sort might be forced to sign labor contracts or be hanged for arson or picking pockets. By the late eighteenth century, however, English and American law began to emphasize contractual relations based on informed consent rather than on birth status. In By Birth or Consent , Holly Brewer explores how the changing legal status of children illuminates the struggle over consent and status in England and America. As it emerged through religious, political, and legal debates, the concept of meaningful consent challenged the older order of birthright and became central to the development of democratic political theory.

The struggle over meaningful consent had tremendous political and social consequences, affecting the whole order of society. It granted new powers to fathers and guardians at the same time that it challenged those of masters and kings. Brewer's analysis reshapes the debate about the origins of modern political ideology and makes connections between Reformation religious debates, Enlightenment philosophy, and democratic political theory.

<!--copy for pb
In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. By the late eighteenth century, however, English and American law began to emphasize contractual relations based on informed consent rather than on birth status. In By Birth or Consent , Holly Brewer explores how the changing legal status of children illuminates the debates over consent and status in England and America. The struggle over meaningful consent had tremendous political and social consequences, affecting the whole order of society. As it emerged through religious, political, and legal debates, the concept of meaningful consent challenged the older order of birthright and became central to the development of democratic political theory.
-->

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

408 pages, Hardcover

First published April 11, 2005

Reviews

[nickoli :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a history seminar! Definitely super interesting and I loved thinking about the enlightenment through a new lens. I didn’t love just how dense this book was. There was so much great information presented, but with how information and points were organized and repeated, and the overall structure of the sentences - it felt like I was swimming through a lot. I don’t think it needed to be this difficult of a read, but it’s definitely manageable (and very rewarding) to do with a pencil in hand.

[Alba M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me understand why youth liberation is so violently rejected by the majority of people, because most adults got their rights by transforming children into the only social group whose oppression is justified.

[Elly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very heavy on political theory and law.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This interesting book explores a fundamental shift in societal assumptions about childhood, informed consent, reason, and political authority that unfolded between the mid-sixteenth century and the early nineteenth centuries. Before this ideological shift in the Anglo-American tradition, children could vote, act as jurors, be elected to government, and be held accountable for their crimes—merely on the basis of their familial status. In other words, authority and its corresponding responsibilities were equated with a family’s societal rank and had nothing to do with mental or emotional capacity. In this paradigm shift from birthright to principled, meaningful consent, political participation became tied to age, and it shifted some authority from kings and masters to men, particularly male heads of household.

Weaving together Enlightenment era philosophy, Reformation era religious debates, and eighteenth-century democratic political theory, this analysis adds a new perspective to thoughts on the origins of modern political ideology and its political and social consequences.

[Ittai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holly Brewer gives an incredibly well-researched and richly detailed historical account of the early modern "revolution in authority" in a welcome update to Carole Pateman's story of the rise of "fraternal patriarchy" as it replaced monarchy and primogeniture. According to Brewer, the Republican tradition was marked by a paradox, most clearly exemplified by John Locke, that simultaneously upheld patriarchal power and challenged it: no longer would children inherit power. Instead, adults with the developed capacity to reason would be in charge. According to these early political theorists, many of whom were religious dissenters as well as political (the two being virtually inextricable in late 17th c. England), responsibility requires reason. Refreshingly, Brewer ignores traditional disciplinary boundaries to bring together religious, legal and philosophical archival material from both sides of the Atlantic, carefully plotting the remarkable story of the arrival on the scene of age-requirements and minority, in the process telling a much larger one about consent, dissent and liberal subjectivity that are so part of post-Enlightenment life we hardly examine them. Brewer hints at the possibility that a large portion of society is left in the category of unreason, childhood and dependency who would, even on the terms put forward by Locke and Sidney, have every right to self-rule, and this is part of the task of resisting patriarchy in the present. I would add that even more interrogation of the roots of the meritocracy we see failing in so many ways today is in order: in what way has the fight against the nobility or "no-ability" as Paine called them resulted in a system that leaves behind millions?