Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500

Front Cover
Routledge, Jul 10, 2014 - History - 256 pages

This book investigates the relationship between ideas about childhood and the actual experience of being a child, and assesses how it has changed over the span of five hundred years. Hugh Cunningham tells an engaging story of the development of ideas about childhood from the Renaissance to the present, taking in Locke, Rosseau, Wordsworth and Freud, revealing considerable differences in the way western societites have understood and valued childhood over time. His survey of parent/child relationships uncovers evidence of parental love, care and, in the frequent cases of child death, grief throughout the period, concluding that there was as much continuity as change in the actual relations of children and adults across these five centuries.

For undergraduate courses in History of the Family, European Social History, History of Children and Gender History.

 

Selected pages

Contents

1 Introduction
1
2 Children and childhood in ancient and medieval Europe
18
3 The development of a middleclass ideology of childhood 15001900
41
4 Family work and school 15001900
81
5 Children philanthropy and the state in Europe 15001860
114
6 Saving the children c1830c1920
137
7 The century of the child?
171
8 Conclusion
201
Guide to further reading
207
Index
227
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500
Hugh Cunningham
Limited preview - 2014
Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500
Hugh Cunningham
No preview available - 2017
Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500
Hugh Cunningham
No preview available - 2005

Common terms and phrases

adult adulthood America argued Ariès Ariès’s attitudes babies became began boys Britain Cambridge Catholic cent Charity chil Child abandonment child labour child-rearing children and childhood Children ofthe Poor children’s rights Christian classes compulsory schooling concern countries culture Cunningham dren early modern Early Modern Europe early twentieth century economic eighteenth century emphasis England English Enlightened Absolutism Europe European evidence family economy family strategy father foundling hospitals France French Germany girls historians history of childhood household Ibid ideas about childhood illegitimacy industrial industrial revolution infant mortality infanticide Kertzer late lives Locke Marriage Mause medieval middle ages mothers nineteenth century nuclear family number of children ofFamily organisations Ospedale degli Innocenti Oxford parent–child parents peasant period philanthropy Philippe Ariès play policies poverty protection quoting Reform relationships role Roman Romanticism Rousseau seventeenth century Shahar sixteenth social society Thoughts Concerning Education tion wet-nursing Women working-class wrote York young

About the author (2014)

Hugh Cunningham is Emeritus Professor of Social History at the University of Kent.

Bibliographic information

TitleChildren and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500
Studies In Modern History
AuthorHugh Cunningham
Edition2, revised
PublisherRoutledge, 2014
ISBN1317868048, 9781317868040
Length256 pages
Subjects ›  › 

History / Europe / General
History / General
  
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