page_title: Centuries of Childhood
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Centuries of Childhood / Synopsis
context_page_description: L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime is a 1960 book on the history of childhood by French historian Philippe Ariès known in English by its 1962 translation, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. It is considered the most famous book on the subject, and it is known for its argument that the concept of "childhood" is a modern development.
context_section_description: The book argues that childhood as an idea has changed over time. It covers the concepts of childhood, adult–child relations, and childhood experience across cultures and time periods. His most well-known sources are medieval paintings that show children as small adults. Ariès argues that childhood was not understood as a separate stage of life until the 15th century, and children were seen as little adults who shared the same traditions, games, and clothes.
  Its most famous conclusions are that "childhood" is a recent idea, and that parenting in the Middle Ages was largely detached. Ariès argues the following: Nuclear family bonds of love and concern did not exist in the era, and children died too often to become emotionally attached. Children were not treated as delicate or protected from sexuality. They spent time with adults outside of family structures, and were not always segregated to school and family structures. Often they would be fostered to others as domestic servants.
  Despite the book's fame for its thesis, Centuries of Childhood focuses more on the beginnings of systematized schooling and the decline of a common public sociability. This focus extends from the author's greater criticism of modern life and its schism of social elements he saw to be once united: "friendship, religion, [and] profession". In this way, Ariès did not believe modern families adequately replace the role of common public community.
caption: Children's Games, Bruegel, 1560
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "25035", "Image ImageLength": "18067", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2019:03:05 14:58:17", "Image ExifOffset": "260", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "398", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7781", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2165"}