The Psychohistory of Child Maltreatment Among Antebellum Slaveholders: Part II

In the psychohistory of the antebellum South, the extent of child abuse in slaveholder families is important for understanding how members of the southern elite were reared and the extent to which they were infected with the toxic residue of their elders’ passions and rages. It is argued that the Old South was a developing region, rather than an already developed one. Consequently, the rate of child abuse that is characteristic of contemporary postindustrial societies is not the proper paradigm for conceptualizing the abuse rate in slaveholder families. It is proposed instead that the rate of child abuse in contemporary developing societies is a better fit for estimating abuse in the antebellum South. Societal and familial variables impinging on the abuse of slaveholder children—corporal punishment, alcohol consumption, hyper-masculinity, a traumatogenic culture of violence, wife abuse, maternal ambivalence and neglect, miscegenation and incest are discussed, as is the likelihood of maltreatment by slaves. Using a study of child abuse across 28 nations, tentative rates of abuse are proposed.