Centuries of Childhood
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| Author | Philippe Ariès |
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| Original title | L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime |
L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime (English: The Child and Family Life in the Ancien Régime) is a 1960 book on the history of childhood by French historian Philippe Ariès known in English by its 1962 translation, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. It is considered the most famous book on the subject, and it is known for its argument that the concept of "childhood" is a modern development.
The book argues that childhood as an idea has changed over time. It covers the concepts of childhood, adult–child relations, and childhood experience across cultures and time periods. His most well-known sources are medieval paintings that show children as small adults. Ariès argues that childhood was not understood as a separate stage of life until the 15th century, and children were seen as little adults who shared the same traditions, games, and clothes.
Its most famous conclusions are that "childhood" is a recent idea, and that parenting in the Middle Ages was largely detached. Ariès claims the following: Nuclear family bonds of love and concern did not exist in the era, and children died too often to become emotionally attached. Children weren't treated as delicate or protected from sexuality. They spent time with adults outside of family structures, and were not always segregated to school and family structures. Often they would be fostered to others as domestic servants.
Despite the book's fame for its thesis, Centuries of Childhood focuses more on the beginnings of systematized schooling and the decline of a common public sociability. This focus extends from the author's greater criticism of modern life and its schism of social elements he saw to be once united: "friendship, religion, [and] profession". In this way, Ariès did not believe modern families adequately replace the role of common public community.
"... in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist."
Writing for the American Historical Review in 1998, Hugh Cunningham states that the book's influence "remains profound" after forty years, especially with respect to medieval childhood. He added that Ariès successfully persuaded his readers that the experience of childhood and its treatment as a stage of life had evolved across time and place. The book began the study of the history of childhood, which led to monographs on histories of individual aspects of childhood. A misleading translation of the French sentiment into "idea" became one of the translation's best known lines, "In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist", and led to a "mini-industry" of medieval scholars rebutting this false thesis.
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