ABSTRACT
In 1960 a pioneering French historian, Philippe Ariès, unusually interested both in demography and in culture, published his book, Centuries of Childhood, on the history of childhood in medieval and early modern Europe, essentially opening childhood to serious historical analysis for the first time. Ariès was inspired by claims, common in France as elsewhere, that the contemporary family was in crisis. These claims were important in their own right, and they also had political implications in that they were often seized upon by conservative groups eager to advance a wider social agenda. Ariès had initially sympathized with the conservative view, but he also realized that the claims of deterioration were hollow without a serious historical base – after all, to know that something is getting worse, one needs a clear understanding of what the situation in the past actually was. It’s quite conceivable – and childhood could be an example – that present conditions rouse concern but are not in fact measurably inferior to those in the past, which may have been unsatisfactory as well (either in the same or in different ways).
