... reasoning leaving a whole new space open for love and affection. The supporters of this school of thought advocate the theme of change. 1 Lawrence Stone, for example suggests that children were simply viewed in this period as "smelly, unformed little animals lacking the capacity to reason"2. On the other side however, there are those that agree that parental love and devotion for their children has always occurred. These followers promote the theme of continuity; that Parental love is a natural, biological instinct that lays deep rooted within the family, as what will be argued here. From the continuality school of thought, Scholars such as Edward Shorter go as far as to say that early modern mothers from small towns and villages practiced "hideously hurtful-infant hygiene and child rearing practices"3. However, as Sharpe points out, what researchers such as Shorter are failing to understand is that family life was so ...

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