Histories of Childhood

Abstract

MORE, PERHAPS, THAN ANY OTHER BRANCH OF HISTORY, the history of has been shaped by the concerns of the world in which its historians live. If it is now a lively field, that is in large part because in the Western world in the late twentieth century there is considerable anxiety about how to bring up children, about the nature of children (angels or monsters?), about the forces, primarily commercialism, impinging on them, and about the rights and responsibilities that should be accorded to them. Historians themselves are subject to these anxieties and frequently acknowledge them as the inspiration for their work.1 But, in addition, they are also responding to demands from the public at large. Seeking understanding and guidance, people turn to the past, hoping that scholars may be able to tell them about children and in history. This stimulus to understanding the historical roots of contemporary anxieties in the West exists alongside but often in isolation from another incentive to historical research on childhood: the poverty in which many of the world's children live, frequently work, and all too often die. Can a historical perspective on the life chances of poor children in the past contribute to understanding the economic and other factors that shape the circumstances of poverty in which most of the world's children exist? For those seeking guidance, the historiography is likely to impart confusion. Historians differ not only in their interpretation of the past but in their definition of the field of study, and in the kinds of questions they ask. One approach suggests that the most interesting and answerable question to ask about the past is not to do with the lives children lived but with the ideas surrounding childhood, and with the way childhood has in different cultures variably stood for innocence, hope, naivete, incapacity, or evil, or has embodied a nostalgia for times past. The