Jo here. As we've just celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, I thought I'd use a Canadian motif.
I've been away for the long weekend at VCon, an SF&F convention in Vancouver. This was lots of fun as Cons usually are. But it means I missed a lot of messages, including comments on the blog. However, I gather there were some about posture. I think it's a mistake to assume torture. I always assume that the same proportion of parents try to do the best for their children in all ages, but the ideas of what is best change. Assuming that our present ideals are truly best is always dangerous.
Some formal postures are healthy. Slumping and forward-thrusting heads most definitely are not. So some aids to good posture in childhood might be beneficial. Also, good posture tended to help a person get ahead in life, something most parents want for their children in one way or another.
Poor posture was also considered the outward sign of lax morals and that's sometimes true today. A shuffling, slouching young man is often judged badly. So we can see why parents went to extremes to try to achieve the appearance of virtue for their children. In addition, there were many who truly believed that children were born evil and needed to be constrained and beaten or they would end up badly. In those cases the children didn't need to do much wrong to be punished.
So, I don't think trying to achieve good posture in children is evil, but I do have doubts about the backboard. I was always fuzzy about what this was until I saw the illustrations in MAKING VICTORIANS: The Drummond Children's World, 1827-1832, by Susan Lasdun, Gollancz. The book is mostly based on illustrations done by the children themselves. Incidentally, they were related to the Drummond-Burrell of Almack's fame, and Lasdun quotes a reference to Almack's from one of the girls, which was interesting as I've rarely seen references to Almack's in personal documents. One of the Drummond girl apparently wrote to her mother about Almack's:
Take the hint and lead me to those halls,
Where youth assembles at so many balls.
The source is an unpublished DRUMMOND ALBUM. Publish it, I say. It sounds fascinating.
Anyway, here we see the backboard in use. What appalls me is not the board, but the child having to hold it like that. For how long? It doesn't say, but here is a pictures of a girl awaiting 
punishment with a birch for not wearing it, so I suspect that was a fairly common occurrence.
There's a comment elsewhere about girls having to wear iron collars with backboards attached. That sounds horrible, too, but not as bad as having to hold the thing up. She could do nothing when in that position, whereas the other girl was apparently expected to get on with her lessons, standing, while wearing it.
The trouble with a source like this, however, is that it seems to consist only of the pictures. I have to wonder if the backboard was universally used and used rigorously, or mostly to correct a problem. Of course, the problem could be one not easily corrected at all, in which case the child would be put through endless torture for no result, but it would be useful to know if this was a corrective measure or a routine.
Even today we put children through very unpleasant measures to achieve an ideal. Braces, anyone?
The way we portray children and parenting in books can be interesting. I don't think we can help bringing some modern sensitivities to it, but I like to try to get within the thinking of the day. For example in one of my books, CHRISTMAS ANGEL, Judith and Leander fall into fights about the raising of her children. She wants to protect them from hurt while he believes boys sometimes need the cane. Speaking from his own experience, he claims to have preferred it to endless lectures and tiresome punishments such as writing out pages of the Bible. And he adds that as Bastian won't escape being beaten at school, he might as well learn to accept it with dignity. That, to me, is true to the times, but it bothered some readers.
So, how do you feel about the portrayal of children and their world in historical fiction? Do you want everyone to have a modern sensibility, or do you prefer something more true to the past? Any interesting info to share about the lives of children in the past?
BTW, I haven't forgotten that I promised a prize for a rhyming post. I haven't had time to evaluate the excellent efforts yet.
Cheers,
Jo