ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a description of both child-study movements. It pays special attention to the rift that was created between the 'objective' scientific knowledge and the knowledge of parents/mothers as non-experts. The chapter considers the connection which developed between the 'child-orientated' upbringings in special 'children's spaces', on the one hand, and, on the other, the need of parents/teachers for more information about normal development of children. Developmental psychologists set down aims for child-orientated pedagogic methods by describing normal, healthy development. The chapter discusses a child-orientated pedagogy and the concept of 'natural development'. In the nineties, the child-study movement was likewise a parent education movement. After 1900, the popularity of the child-study movement went into decline. In the child-study movement under the leadership of G. Stanley Hall, teachers and mothers were consumers and producers of scientific knowledge; reading and filling in questionnaires was a popular pastime.
