ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the themes in the development of thinking about children and childhood from the early modern age to the present. Lady Hervey explained that children "acquire arts but not qualities; the latter, whether good or bad, grow like their features; time enlarges but does not make them". Through industrialization and urbanization, modernization had tremendous, if varied, effects on children; many did not survive it. Industrialization also had a tremendous impact on children's lives. Childen are being "sexualized" younger; adults are being socialized to children's sexuality. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Sigmund Freud's theories of psycho-sexual development not only contradicted the Romantic view but added new and startling dimensions of thought- children as little animals and children as rampant ids. In sum, a world, or several worlds of childhood co-existed in the early modern period, with enormous variations by class and by philosophical or religious orientation.
