Talk:History of childhood

Major restructuring
I reverted your recent restructure because it changed too much at once (most of the article) and introduced inaccuracies in the process that can't be directly remedied. If you could break it into smaller edits and explain why you moved things, it would make more sense to follow in the edit history. As is, the edits introduced inaccuracies like, "During the 1600s, the concept of childhood began to emerge in Europe," which does not reflect research on the topic (Orme refuted this basic point of Ariès' in Medieval Children). And, in fact, the deMause citation about Ariès was removed too (I'd also contend that the Historiography section shouldn't have been destroyed). czar ♔  12:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Although there is scholarly debate about the precise nature of 'childhood' as a concept in premodern times, there is a basic consensus that a protracted shift in social attitudes did take place over the modern period. Clearly childhood today, with a plethora of parental guidance strategies, toys, schools and books is a very different thing to it's medieval counterpart, and the history article should chart that change, which began in the 17th cent. - seethis, this and this. Aries' claims may be too far reaching for some, but there are definitely important differences between our time and the middle ages.


 * The historiography section was just incorporated into the the lede. If you don't like the particular wording, then please feel free to change it, but as it is the article is quite difficult to read and lacks coherence.Noodleki (talk) 20:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's worth making the distinction more explicit since "the concept of childhood" rings of the Ariès thesis and not the nuance you just described. And be sure to source such statements with direct footnotes in the article. czar  ♔  23:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Eurocentric bias
The whole article seems to only feature European notions and origins of childhood, except for the final section on Japan which seems to suggest that they finally crawled out of the mud and copied what the Western world was doing by the 19th century. It could do with some alternative threads about the development of the ideas in other parts of the world over the last two millennia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.198.182.90 (talk) 08:39, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


 * ... or even longer. Yes, it would be great to add more information about non-Western concepts and approaches. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 08:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Feel free to suggest sources or boldly add sourced material yourself – czar   17:44, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * yes --start with the bibliography which will bring you up to speed on China, India, Latin America etc. Rjensen (talk) 17:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes this article is indeed Eurocentric bias, but I think it un-intentional. I am looking for certain books now to enrich this article with further information, I think we could contact other wikiperojects if they have ideas Alexis Ivanov (talk) 03:30, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
 * thank you very much mr. Hassan Turko-Arab (aka russian wannabe, fake russian)--125.198.234.34 (talk) 11:58, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

No also my name is Mr.Hussein Turko-Arab. Not Hassan Alexis Ivanov (talk) 20:53, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Russian wiki-article
Exemplary! ru:Дети в Византии (Children in Byzantium)--Shanghainese.ua (talk) 11:01, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Needs to be "globalized"
Ths article is still quite "western centric", however two sections have a really narrow view and need to be globalized. Tagged as such. Regards, DPdH (talk) 10:25, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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General commentary
Worst article I've read on Wikipedia in years. There are markers suggesting a majority of the running commentary has been plagiarized such as, "for this research..." Additionally, it seems like large swaths of the content is Western, religious, patriarchal, and clumsily paraphrased in huge paragraphs. There are too many internal contradictions as well. It's as if a high schooler wrote a report at the last moment after skimming 2-3 books.

24.167.252.105 (talk) 21:07, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the above. I don't really have experiencing editing Wikipedia but this article has serious problems which is surprising to me as it's not exactly a super esoteric topic. The 'American Education' section in particular. "This was a pivotal change in the history of childhood, that would inspire children to go into fields of math and science."? "After 2000 some children became mesmerized by their cell phones, often checking their text messages or Facebook page"? Does 'American Education' really need its own section? 165.1.187.217 (talk) 22:48, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Entry?) Historians and the history of childhood
Children and childhood were long ignored in professional history writing according to professional historians who now occupy that field. For example, historians Elliott West and Paula Petrik wrote that "adults receive virtually all the attention of those telling the stories of past societies while boys and girls, if mentioned at all, appear usually as passive and peripheral creatures, pliant parties to forces beyond their control or amusing figures playing at the edges of the main action."

In the twentieth century, the history of childhood has become a subfield of social history within its own right with an expressed commitment to bring young, often marginalised, people into historical narratives. Practitioners argue that history is less accurate if it does not take into account young people's presence and that despite often being less powerful than adults children could act with historical agency themselves. The field is often divided, particularly by North American scholars, into "children's history" and "the history of childhood." The history of childhood is concerned with childhood the social construct and often pays attention to adult opinions and representations of children. Children's history privileges the opinions and responses of children themselves.

Children's history in particular is sometimes said to encounter a "source problem" as children have not left behind the same types of written historical records as adults. Some historians promote the idea that drawings by historical children can be used as historical sources to help understand more about the experiences and opinions of young people in the past. Historian Jack Hodgson argues that although drawings often have a degree of ambiguity owing to the need to interpret them they still have "enormous communicative potential" including "providing insight into unquantifiable feelings or emotions." Biohistorian15 (talk) 09:51, 3 May 2024 (UTC)