I'd like to agree with that argument. The problem is, that many of Alexandra's notes to her children were about such intensely private and emotional things, the kinds of things children are usually too afraid to speak about in a voice above a whisper, much less to confide to a piece of paper!
I'd like to go back to a point Angie raised at the beginning of this discussion, i.e., that Alexandra raised her children in much the same way she was raised, that is, in the English fashion. We tend to forget how most upperclass children fared in England. They were raised primarily by their nanny and a flock of nursemaids. In other words, most of the actual child rearing was left to servants. Children of the aristocracy and even the middle class were fortunate if they saw their parents once a day. This was during the so-called "Children’s Hour," when traditionally the entire family gathered for tea. (A tradition upheld by Nicholas and Alexandra.)
As children got older, girls usually were kept at home, under the supervision of a governess. Sometimes one daughter, often the youngest, was expected to stay unmarried and care for her parents in their old age. Meanwhile boys were sent off to public school by the age of eight or nine, and only saw their families on holidays. (Foreigners even as early as the sixteenth century viewed this practice as evidence that the English "hated" their own children!)
Examples of famous "neglected" children abound. (By which standards, Nicholas and Alexandra were above-average parents!) Winston Churchill’s parents virtually ignored him until he became a teenager, and showed promise of becoming as talented as his famous father. (He was fortunate that he had a nanny who loved him, and with whom he could form an enduring bond.) But his experience could hardly be called unique.
A historian of childhood, Lloyd de Mause, calls the world of Victorian childhood "terrifying." Servants could and did take out their problems and frustrations on the little children under their care. Older children often tormented their tutors and governesses, knowing that, as mere "servants" in the household, these teachers would probably never dare to punish them. In the case of royal children, the position of tutor or governess assumed a much greater importance. The teacher played a crucial role in forming the intellect and views of future monarchs. (We would expect that a future autocrat would receive an education at least equal to, preferrably superior to, that received by a future constitutional monarch!) But the tutor or governess also helped to shape the child’s behavior, as the only regular source of discipline and example for the child, in the absence of the parents. If OTMA "behaved like savages," it was no doubt because, after Mme. Tiutcheva left, they had no governess to keep an eye on them.
