During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several learned authors of both Protestant and Catholic origin sought to regulate the gender-specific duties and rights of family members by penning familial advice books.
These religiously orientated moralistic texts spread all over Europe, including its northern parts. In the kingdom of Sweden, Swedish writers produced their own versions of these texts, but foreign books—for example, from the German territories—were also translated and read by people of middle or higher social standing.
The advice was primarily directed at the heads of households, and it reflected contemporary notions of power, violence, and gender in society at large. To raise one’s children well was not a private matter but rather an important part of societal order, and this aim justified different kinds of acts towards one’s offspring. They did not, however, permit unnecessary cruelty; instead, they emphasised Christian ways of teaching. Parents had the duty to raise their children well, but the means of doing so were disputed. Based on this debate, my chapter discusses ideal parenting in the context of a pan-European literary genre—familial advice books—and its view on disciplinary correction.