Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900by Linda A. Pollock
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. No reviews no reviews | add a review
'The history of childhood is an area so full of errors, distortion and misinterpretation that I thought it vital, if progress were to be made, to supply a clear review of the information on childhood contained in such sources as diaries and autobiographies.' Dr Pollock's statement in her Preface will startle readers who have not questioned the validity of recent theories on the evolution of childhood and the treatment of children, theories which see a movement from a situation where the concept of childhood was almost absent, and children were cruelly treated, to our present western recognition that children are different and should be treated with love and affection. Linda examines this thesis particularly through the close and careful analysis of some hundreds of English and American primary sources. Through these sources, she has been able to reconstruct, probably for the first time, a genuine picture of childhood in the past, and it is a much more humane and optimistic picture than the current stereotype. Her book contains a mass of novel and original material on child-rearing practices and the relations of parents and children, and sets this in the wider framework of developmental psychology, socio-biology and social anthropology. Forgotten Children admirably fulfils the aim of its author. In the face of this scholarly and elegant account of the continuity of parental care, few will now be able to argue for dramatic transformations in the twentieth century. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.2309Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Age groups AdolescentsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |