Sociologists disagree on whether the concept of childhood existed before the 1600s. Philippe Aries and others argued that childhood was not recognized as distinct from adulthood, while Linda Pollock and others argue parents have always been emotionally invested in their children. Pollock cites diaries showing parents deeply grieved child deaths, suggesting childhood has long been recognized. The debate centers on whether parental care and the view of children have fundamentally changed over time.

2.  Some sociologist state that there were no
childhood phase before the 1600
 Main Sociologist : Philippe Aries, Lawrence
Stone, Lloyd De Mause

3. Philippe Aries said that the idea of children should be treated separately
from adults-childhood is a separate and distinct phase of life- dates
back only a few centuries in Europe
Before 1600 ‘the idea of childhood did not exist…as soon as the child
could live without the constant solicitude of his mother, his nanny or his
cradle rocker he belonged to the society’
Aries and Lloyd De Mause painted a very negative
childhood
De Mause (The History of Childhood)
"The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only
recently begun to awaken."
believing that;
"The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child
care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned,
beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused".

4. Lawrence Stone : The Family, Sex and Marriage in England
1500 to 1800 (1977) argues from a note in an account book
;
A 17th-century man wrote, “Paid for my loving son’s John’s
funeral, 2 shillings and six pence.”
that parents of that era were indifferent to the deaths of their
children, proving that parents were not bonded to their
children and therefore did not grieve at a child’s death.

5. Aries concluded that there was no concept of childhood as a
state different to adulthood in these centuries, and therefore,
even if parents did feel affection for their offspring, they did not
fully understand how to respond to the emotional needs of their
children.
Stone too focused on the "evolution" of the family through these
three centuries, arguing that the family changed from being of an
"open lineage" structure in which family relationships were formal
and repressed, to the "domesticated nuclear family", which
resulted in "affective individualism".
The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800.

6. It has been argued by Stone, Aries and De Mause, that there was
a growing awareness of childhood as a state different to adult
hood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
According to them, society was beginning to appreciate that
children were not miniature adults, but were at a substantially
lower level of maturity, and so had distinct needs from adults -
protection, love and nurturing.
Lawrence Stone argues that one of the reasons why parents and
children were emotionally distant in the early part of this period,
was because of the high infant mortality rate.
He argues that parents were reluctant to invest love and care in
their children, because of the pain losing them would cause. (His
point was argued by Linda Pollock)

7. Aries states that the separation of childhood from adulthood
is the product of later centuries.
• In 1750, more infants died than lived
•Dead children began to be represented on their parents tombs
•Child become more valued, but still no separate world of childhood (all
the family members slept in the same room , children of the lower
classes went out to work )
•In the 1880s:
->> school attendance become compulsory
->> school-leaving age gradually raised
• Results in the new position of children ( dependant and loved )

10.  Some sociologist were against the opinion
that childhood did not exist before the 17th
century
 Main sociologists : Linda Pollock, April
Brayfield and Marilyn Brown

11. In the early 1980's, Linda Pollock in her influential, yet highly
controversial work, Forgotten Children : Parent - child Relations 1500-
1900, harshly criticised all the arguments made by Aries, de Mause and
Stone.
From her intensive study of over four hundred diaries and journals, she
argued that childhood experiences were not as grim as they suggest it
was. She strongly denies that there were any fundamental changes in
the way parents viewed or reared their children in this period;
"The texts reveal no significant change in the quality of parental care
given to, or the amount of affection felt for infants for the period 1500-
1900".
Pollock's work has received support from Rosemary O'Day and Mary
Abbot, who both deny that childhood "evolved" considerably in this
period

12. Marilyn Brown : before the 18th century, children were often depicted
as miniature adults in paintings.
That’s one reason the historian refuted by Pollock – Philippe Aries- in
his Centuries of Childhood (1962) mistakenly deduced there was no
concept of childhood then
She argues that if this was the case, then one would expect the
indifference towards children to have prevailed as long as the death
rate. Pollock argues that contrary to reducing parental emotional
investment, the high death rate only served to heighten their
anxiety in times of illness, and increase their level of care.
(Lawrence Stone’s point of view)

14. Ilana Ben-Amos argues that parents would only part with their
children when it was absolutely essential. In the early seventeenth
century for example, it was only after James Fretwell, who was then
only four years old, came home weeping because he could not
manage the distance between Sandal and Yorkshire every day, that
his father out of concern for his welfare put him to lodge with a
widow in Sandal.

15. A STORY BASED ON LINDA POLLOCK’S RESEARCH
Nehemiah Wallington, a London chair maker who lived from 1598 to 1658, ‘talked’ about
his sorrow at the death of his daughter Elizabeth, age 4.
It’s a tough time for a religious parent when a child gets sick
->> they could only watch and pray helplessly over an ill child because medical care was
so ineffective
->> their religious faith assured them that a dying child was being called by God to a
better place
Pollock said : “You could see them go back and forth here by these emotional pulls,
pulling you apart,” How could they dispense with God’s will when they were meant to be
obedient to God’s will?
Wallington, based on his diary , said :
“I did forget my God in this because my grief for this child was so great I couldn’t stop
myself from it”
“The grief for this child was so great that I forget myself so much that I did offend God in
it; I broke all my purposes, promises and covenants wit my God, for I was much
distracted in my mind, and could not be comforted, although my friends speak
comfortably unto me”

16. Linda Pollock
Parentchild relationships have some
cultural differences and slightly
differences in degree, but, essentially,
they do not change
Parents are enormously
emotionally invested in
their children
If we’re going to argue that parental care changes
so much to the degree that historians have argued
– we’re denying the basic capacity of human beings
to handle emotional involvement
The ‘pasts’ cared deeply for and truly loved
their children . ‘I don’t think we as humans
as a species can reproduce without an
enormous amount of emotional investment’

19. Age of Innocence
by Sir Joshua Reynolds

20. Jean Renoir Sewing
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
By Mary Cassatt