ABSTRACT
Philippe Ariès observed in Centuries of Childhood that there were two concepts of childhood by the end of the seventeenth century that signaled a fundamental shift in attitudes toward children in Western societies. The first was the idea that children should be “coddled” by family members; that is, that they had come to be regarded as objects of affection and attention – sources of pleasure and “charming toys” in Ariès's words. The second was the idea that children were “fragile creatures of God who needed to be safeguarded and reformed.” The latter notion, he says, came from outside the family – from “churchmen and moralists” – but this attitude came to reside within the family as well. In the eighteenth century, Ariès argues, a new element joined the first two: “concern about hygiene and physical health.” These three attitudes culminated during the nineteenth century in the “sacralization” of children among the urban middle classes in Europe and North America, in the creation of mass schooling, and by the end of that century, in a permanent reversal of infant and child mortality. 1
