The History of Childhood

In the historiography of childhood one book stands preeminent, Philippe Ariès’ L’Enfant et la Vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime, published in France in 1960, and translated into English as Centuries of Childhood in 1962. Over 30 years after its publication, Ariès’ book is still the touchstone against which other publications measure themselves and are measured. In the modern world, few books have as long a shelf life as this, and the survival of Ariès’ book is all the more peculiar in that everyone is agreed that his interpretation of the history of attitudes to childhood cannot be sustained; both the evidence he used and the concepts he applied are flawed.