Only in the closing decades of the Victorian period was there a gradual return to child-centredness and permissiveness caused by a variety of new influences – the decline of religiosity, women’s emancipation, family limitation and the new psychological theories of child development. These trends ultimately affected all social classes in the twentieth century, resulting in the small, modern family characterised by high concentration of affection, a decline in paternal authority, more ‘natural’ child-rearing practices and more democratic sharing of roles.
Subsequent commentators have questioned Ariès’s thesis and methodology (Pol-lock 1983), and indeed some of his conclusions do not appear to be sufficiently supported by the evidence. In short, his work:
sparked off a whole series of strictly historical debates: on whether the mediaeval period did in fact have an awareness of childhood, on the key periods in ‘the discovery of childhood’, on the nature of parent – child relations at various periods, and on the role of the schools to name a few.
(Heywood 2001: 5)
Both Ariès and another historian, Lloyd De Mause, believed in essence that the further one went back in history the worse would be the level of treatment of children. Indeed, De Mause stated that ‘[t]he history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken’ and that ‘[t]he further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorised, and sexually abused’ (De Mause 1976: 1–2).
Archard (1993), among others, has provided a carefully crafted deconstruction of Ariès’s influential thesis. He points not only to the weak evidential basis but also to Ariès’s ‘predisposition to interpret the past in the light of present-day attitudes, assumptions and concerns’. Furthermore, he argues that Ariès subscribes (wrongly) to a historical understanding of ‘modernity’ as a linear progression to moral enlightenment. Instead, Archard argues, one can employ a distinction between a ‘concept’ and a ‘conception’ to better analyse Ariès’s thesis. The argument, in brief, is that to have a ‘concept’ of childhood is to recognise that there is a distinction between children and adults. To have a ‘conception’ of childhood is a specification of what the distinguishing attributes are. Archard concludes that all societies at all times have had a concept of childhood, but there have been a number of different conceptions. Historically, we cannot be confident about the reliability of our knowledge in relation to these conceptions. He therefore concludes that Ariès’s thesis is flawed by what he refers to as an ‘ill judged leap’ from ‘concept’ to ‘conception’.
Archard also provides an interesting conceptual framework to accommodate the examination of different ‘conceptions’ of childhood. He introduces three elements to the notion of childhood: its ‘boundaries’, ‘dimensions’ and ‘divisions’. The boundary for childhood he defines as the point at which it ends. He argues that any particular society’s conception of this boundary may differ according to its culture. Conceptions of childhood frequently locate the relevant boundary in relation to cultural ‘rites of passage or initiation ceremonies which celebrate the end of childhood and beginning of adulthood’; according to Archard, ‘[t]hese are likely to be associated with permission to marry, departure from the parental home or assumption of the responsibility to provide for oneself’ (Archard 1993: 23).
Conceptions of childhood may also differ according to their ‘dimensions’. Archard suggested that a number of perspectives would render a distinction between children and adults; for example, moral, juridical, philosophical and political. Each society will have its own particular value system which may at any one time favour one or more of these perspectives. Sometimes a society sets the legal age of majority according to a view about one or more of these dimensions. A majority age need not necessarily be consistent with the ‘boundary’ implied by other dimensions. By way of illustration of this point, Archard points to the origins (in Europe) of the age of majority, which was fixed in the Middle Ages by the capacity of a young boy to bear arms and changed as armour became increasingly heavier and thus demanded greater strength to wear it (Archard 1993: 25). If, however, rationality is the key dimension, then the acquisition of reason is a better test of majority age. Similarly, in societies that focus on the overriding importance of sustaining and reproducing life, ‘the ability to work and bear offspring is a strikingly obvious mark of maturity’ (Archard 1993: 26).
Archard argues that conceptions of childhood will also depend on how its ‘divisions’ are ordered and managed. There are in most societies a number of sub-categories between birth and adulthood. Most cultures recognise a period of very early infancy where the child is particularly vulnerable and deserving of adult care; a point that is consistent with the findings of developmental psychology outlined in the following discussion. Some cultures attach importance to weaning; the point where close maternal care finishes. Some societies put particular significance on the point at which a child acquires speech. Roman law specified three age periods of childhood: infantia (child incapable of speech); tutela impuberes (pre-pubescent child requiring a tutor); and cura minores (post-pubescent young person requiring the care of a guardian prior to attaining majority).
At any rate, the notion of ‘adolescence’ or ‘youth’ in the modern conception of childhood is widely recognised as a period usually involving an apprenticeship for the roles to be required of adulthood. Indeed, the inclusion of the ‘middle-aged child’, that is, the post-infantile seven-year-old to the pre-adolescent 12-year-old, is arguably a key element of the modern conception of childhood. Archard (1993: 27) concluded that:
any conception of childhood will vary according to the ways in which its boundaries are set, its dimensions ordered and its divisions managed. This will determine how a culture thinks about the extent, nature and significance of childhood. The adoption of one conception rather than another will reflect prevailing general beliefs, assumptions and priorities. Is what matters to a society that a human can speak, be able to distinguish good from evil, exercise reason, learn and acquire knowledge, fend for itself, procreate, participate in running the society or work alongside its other members?
In an influential and controversial work, Pollock (1983) challenged what had become the orthodoxy of Ariès, De Mause and Stone. She argued that the experience of childhood was not as unremittingly gloomy as had been portrayed. Her study was based on her doctoral work which examined over 500 published diaries and autobiographies. She rebutted the notion that there were any fundamental changes in the way parents viewed or reared their children in the period 1500–1900: ‘[t]he texts reveal no significant change in the quality of parental care given to, or the amount of affection felt for infants for the period 1500–1900’ (Pollock 1983: 3).
The controversies in historical research about childhood are not made easier by the difficulties in locating reliable source materials. One commentator puts it thus:
Ideas about childhood in the past exist in plenitude; it is not so easy to find out about the lives of children. There are sources which can tell us about their numbers in relation to adults, their life expectancy, the ages at which they were likely to start work and leave home and so on, but those seeking to recapture the emotional quality of the lives of children in the past encounter formidable hurdles. The letters and diaries of parents seem to be one way of surmounting the hurdles, but they tend to be written only by the articulate and well-to-do, and in them our view of the child is mediated through the perceptions of the adult. Children themselves have sometimes left behind written materials, but too often what they write in their diaries tells us more about the genre of diary writing and the desires and expectations of adult readers than about the experience of being a child.
(Cunningham 2005: 2)
In essence, what emerges from the historical analyses is that the notion of childhood is a culturally transmitted idea that may have changed significantly over past centuries, though there is little consensus about the detail of how and why these changes in perception have occurred. At the least, this brief survey of the historical perspective of childhood ought to suggest that the aim of universal norm-creation underlying international human rights instruments, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,3 may not necessarily be consistent with the core notion of childhood prevalent ...