History of childhood

The history of childhood has been a topic of interest in social history since the 1960s.

Playing Children, by Song Dynasty Chinese artist Su Hanchen, c. 1150 AD.

It has been argued that childhood is not a natural phenomenon but a creation of society. Philippe Ariès, an important French historian, pointed this out in his book Centuries of Childhood. This theme was then taken up by Cunningham in his book the Invention of Childhood (2006) which looks at the historical aspects of childhood from the Middle Ages to what he refers to as the Post War Period of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Ariès published a study in 1961 of paintings, gravestones, furniture, and school records. He found that before the 17th-century, children were represented as mini-adults. Since then historians have increasingly researched childhood in past times.

During the Renaissance, artistic depictions of children increased dramatically in Europe. This did not impact the social attitude to children much, however—see the article on child labor.

The man usually credited with - or accused of - creating the modern notion of childhood is Jean Jacques Rousseau. Building on the ideas of John Locke and other 17th-century liberal thinkers, Rousseau in his famous novel Emile formulated childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood. "Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly," Rousseau pleaded. "Why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?"

The Victorian Era has been described as a source of the modern institution of childhood. Ironically, the Industrial Revolution during this era led to an increase in child labor, but due to the campaigning of the Evangelicals, and the descriptions of London street life by Charles Dickens and others, child labor was gradually reduced and halted in England via the Factory Acts of 1802-1878. The Victorians concomitantly emphasized the role of the family and the sanctity of the child, and broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western societies since then.

See also

• Annales School
• Childhood
• Social history

Bibliography

• Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. *1962). Influential study that helped launch the field
• Bunge, Marcia J., ed. The Child in Christian Thought. (2001)
• Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500. (1995).
• Colon, A.R. Colon. A History of Children: A Socio-Cultural Survey across Millennia (2001)
• Cunnington, Phillis and Anne Buck. Children’s Costume in England: 1300 to 1900. (1965)
• deMause, Lloyde, ed. The History of Childhood. (1976), psychohhistory.
• Immel, Andrea and Michael Witmore, eds. Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800. (2006).
• Kopf, Hedda Rosner. Understanding Anne Frank's the Diary of a Young Girl: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (1997) online edition
• Mintz, Steven. Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (2004)
• Müller, Anja, ed. Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: Age and Identity (2006)
• Nicholas, Lynn H. Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web (2005) 656pp
• O’Malley, Andrew. The Making of the Modern Child: Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century. (2003).
• Pinchbeck, Ivy and Margaret Hewitt. Children in English Society. 2 vols. (1969).
• Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-child relations from 1500 to 1900 (1983).
• Schultz, James. The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages.
• Shorter, Edward. The Making of the Modern Family.
• Sommerville, C. John. The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England. (1992).
• Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (1979).
• Tuttle, Jr. William M. Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children (1995) online edition
• Welshman, John. Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain (2010)
• Zahra, Tara. "Lost Children: Displacement, Family, and Nation in Postwar Europe," Journal of Modern History, March 2009, Vol. 81 Issue 1, pp 45-86, covers 1945 to 1951
• Zornado, Joseph L. Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology, and the Story of Childhood. (2001).

Historiography

• Fass, Paula. "The World is at our Door: Why Historians of Children and Childhood Should Open Up," Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Jan 2008, Vol. 1 Issue 1, pp 11-31
• Stearns, Peter N. "Challenges in the History of Childhood," Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Jan 2008, Vol. 1 Issue 1, pp 35-42
• Stearns, Peter N. Childhood in World History (2005)
• West, Elliott. Growing Up in Twentieth-Century America: A History and Reference Guide (1996) online edition