Children and childhood (2nd ed ) (2^nd Ed.)

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, including 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.

1.Introduction The historiography of childhood 2. Children and Childhood in Ancient and Medieval Europe The classical inheritence Christianity The middle ages 3. The Development of a Middle-class Ideology of Childhood, 1500-1900 Humanism Protestantism Catholicism The eighteenth century The influence of romanticism 4. Family, Work and School, 1500-1900 The peasant family Proto-industrialization Industrialization Demography Community Schooling Interest and emotion 5. Children, Philanthropy and the State in Europe, 1500-1860 Children and poverty Schooling 1750-1860 6. Saving the Children, 1830-1920 Child labour Street children Cruelty to children Philanthropy, the state and children State concerns and children's rights 7. 'The Century of the Child'? Science, experts anad childhood Children and social policy Parents and children Childhood under threat 8.Conclusion Guide to Further Reading