Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries

Introduction

Since the publication of the influential book by Philippe Aries in the 1960, ‘Centuries of Childhood’, it caused a major topic of interest for historians. For many years, oral history has become a predominant technique used by historians to help gain further understanding of the lives people lived in the past. The Oral History Society stated that oral history is the recordings of an individual’s memories and experiences. This suggests that it is almost viewed as a technique which enables historians or researcher to gather information based on people’s unique memories and their lifestyle which enables them to reconstruct the past. Therefore to gain in-depth information, this technique was used to explore types of childhood experienced by people of different time periods and culture. Hence this technique was used to explore and obtain information based on childhood experiences of those born in the 1950s compared to those born around the 1980s. Issues such as family life, leisure and education will be explored because they are considered as factors which heavily influence the type of childhood a child will experience as well as predict the outcome of their future. These areas are considered to be important because they play a major role on the childhood experience of an individual.

Procedure

Secondary literature such as textbooks and websites were explored which provided insights to what was actually occurring at the period in which each interviewee was born into. This also assisted with developing questions for the interview and to gain a basic understanding of the type of childhood and education the interviewee must have experienced.

Prior to the interview, a semi-structured interview, with open ended questions, was d...

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