Philippe Aries

Philippe Aries, a French historian, is credited with making the history of childhood a serious field of historical study.  His book Centuries of Childhood published in 1962 examined the relationship between parents and their children from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century.  His book coincided with popular concerns about shrinking families, permissive attitudes towards child rearing and wayward adolescents. 

The idea of "childhood" as its own stage of development only recently entering into popular thinking, as Aries explains was an eye opener for me.  Aries explained that "children resided on the margins of family life and their upbringing was often subject to benign neglect" and that during the Middle Ages there was "little sense of childhood".  It is a very different perspective from today's society and how carefully and methodically we approach childhood and adolescent development.  It raises the question as to why exactly were people inclined to have children, if not to love and nurture, but to neglect.  I suppose the lack of family planning and the need for physical labor had much to do with it, but did they really have such little compassion?