The Evolution of Childhood in Europe and America Essay -- Exploratory

The Evolution of Childhood in Europe and America Somewhere around the beginning of the seventeenth century, the perception of the nature of childhood -- its duration, its perceived purpose, its requirements, its quality -- changed rather significantly in the Eurocentric world, a period Valerie Suransky identifies as a watershed for the modern notion of childhood (1982, p. 6). Actually, two things seemed to have happened: first, the idea of childhood as a separate developmental stage began to arise; second, the idea of who was deserving of childhood also began to broaden. The pattern was similar in Europe and America, with some minor variations which resulted from geography, religion, etc., but the differences are inconsequential. Generally speaking, the factors which influenced this change are the view of the nature of humankind, the development of industry, urbanization, parents themselves, and the women's movement. According to Sharar (1990), childhood in Europe during the Middle Ages was a concept pretty much limited to members of the upper-class. Children of the lower-classes generally had a rather extended infancy period -- to about age seven -- but were then, essentially, tossed into the adult world. With the advent of Calvinism, and protestantism in general, in the late 1500s, the focus shifted, perhaps because of the rise of a middle class, perhaps because of the new religion's focus on the individual. In the Protestant view, in which humans were viewed as innately evil, soiled by original sin, children were also considered moral agents, and therefore in need of shaping. Given this idea, it was reasonable to stifle children's natural impulses by physically punishing those impulses, to set them in... ...973). Tools for conviviality. NY: Harper and Row. Platt, Anthony. (1982). The rise of the child-saving movement. In Chris Jenks (Ed.) The sociology of childhood: Essential readings (pp. 151-169). London: Batsfords Academic and Educational Ltd. Rose, Lionel. (1991). The Erosion of childhood. NY: Routledge. Sharar, Shulamith. (1990). Childhood in the middle ages. London: Routledge. Strickland, Charles. (1984). The Rise and fall of modern American childhood: Reflections on the history of childhood in the twentieth century. Atlanta, GA: Emory University, Department of History. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED248977) Suransky, Valerie. (1982). The erosion of childhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Welter, Barbara. (1966). The cult of true womanhood: 1820-1860. The American Quarterly, 18. 151-174.