A History of Children

A History of Children investigates the treatment of children throughout the millennia, examining and comparing, in the timeline from prehistory to the present, cultural codes, and societal laws. A recurrent theme in the book is the unchanging, immutable nature of childhood despite epochal and societal differences in birth rituals, education, puberty rituals, inheritance laws, child labor legislation, cultural customs, and historical events that have affected the lives of children over the last 5000 years. Despite the cruelties of infanticide, abandonment, and slavery that continue to have a presence in the modern world, the love and regard for children have not changed drastically. The authors reveal the impact of laws, religions, pedagogues, medicine, advocates, and the rogues of history--plagues, tyrants, wars, superstitions, poverty and famines--on the lives of children. They paint a composite portrait of the child within the broad swatches of early civilizations, the Classical and Patristic periods, the medieval and Renaissance epochs, the Reformation, Revolutionary periods, and the past century--all with the intent to inform the reader of the past and to prepare for the future.