page_title: Medieval Children
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Medieval Children / Synopsis
context_page_description: Medieval Children is a book on the history of childhood written by English historian Nicholas Orme in 2001. It covers aspects of English children throughout the Middle Ages. The book addresses what is considered Philippe Ariès's central thesis in Centuries of Childhood, that there was no medieval understanding of childhood as a phase, an idea that critics have said Orme refutes successfully.
context_section_description: The book uses a wide range of sources to refute Philippe Ariès's Centuries of Childhood famous theses of the medieval nonexistence of "childhood" as an idea and of apathetic medieval parenting. Orme states that childhood was a phase distinct from the rest of life, "medieval children were ourselves, five hundred or a thousand years ago" with parents who genuinely cherished and grieved for their children, similar to modern parents. The book's refutation of Ariès is diffuse, broaching his thesis but not other aspects of Centuries of Childhood. Orme uses examples from the English Middle Ages where Ariès uses the French. Orme's source materials include primers, journals, coroners' records, and shoes.
  Orme shows childhood to be expensive, with clothing like bibs and swaddlebands alongside books and community expenses. Children were breastfed and given special shoes to wear and items to chew. They would dress up, accidentally die while playing, and hurt animals.
caption: Children's Games, 1560, Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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