Children and childhood in western society since 1500

Summary: "Children and Childhood investigates the relationship between ideas about childhood and the actual experience of being a child, assessing how it has changed over a span of five hundred years. Hugh Cunningham tells an engaging story of the development of ideas about childhood from the Renaissance to the present, including Locke, Rousseau, Wordsworth and Freud, revealing considerable differences in the way western societies have understood and valued childhood over time. His survey of parent/child relationships uncovers evidence of parental love, care and, in the frequent cases of child death, grief throughout the period, concluding that there was as much continuity as change in the actual relations of children and adults across these five centuries." "The only book in English to bring the history of childhood up to the present, Children and Childhood is essential reading for those studying the history of childhood, as well as an excellent background for those involved in policy-making today or anyone wanting a historical context for modern worries about childhood." --BOOK JACKET.