A History of Children

"A History of Children investigates the treatment of children throughout the millennia, examining and comparing, in the timeline from prehistory to the present, cultural codes and societal laws. A recurrent theme in the book is the unchanging, immutable nature of childhood despite epochal and societal differences in birth rituals, education, puberty rituals, inheritance laws, child labor legislation, cultural customs and historical events that have affected the lives of children over the last 5000 years. In spite of the cruelties of infanticide, abandonment and slavery that continue to have a presence in the modern world, the treatment of children has not changed drastically. The authors reveal the impact of laws, religions, pedagogues, medicine, advocates, and the rogues of history - plagues, tyrants, wars, superstitions, poverty and famines - on the lives of children. They paint a composite portrait of the child within the broad swatches of early civilizations, the Classical and Patristic periods, the medieval and Renaissance epochs, the Reformation, Revolutionary periods, and the past century - all with the intent to inform the reader of the past and to prepare for the future."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.