Centuries Of Childhood By Philippe Aries

Centuries of Childhood is a social history of family life (1960) that is a history of childhood written by Philippe Aries’s. It is about controversial claim that childhood, as a concept ,was not “discovered” until well after the middle ages. While Child Act 2011( Act 611) is an example that is repealed the Juvenile Courts Act 1947( Act 90) the Women and Girls Protection Act 1973(Act 106) and the Child Protection Act 1991(Act 468). Act 611 preamble provides that every child is entitled to protection and assistance in all circumtances without regard to distinction of any kind , such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, social origin or physical mental or emotional disabilities.

Aries is an archivist for the Institute of Applied Research

Aries argues Childhood is a relatively new concept that emerged around the seventeenth century, concomitant with such developments as a decrease in infant mortality, changes in the European educational system, increasing class stratification, and a gradual withdrawal of the family from a wider web of social relation.

In a controversial claim, Aries argument regarding the “discovery” of childhood in seventeenth century in much debated point which is “in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist”(Aries, 125). This claim has been both enthusiastically adopted and categorically dismissed by scholar from various disciplines. Hugh Cunningham points out that the English translation of Aries’s text uses the term “idea” where Aries himself uses the term “sentiment” which carries two meaning: “the sense of a feeling about childhood as well as a concept of it” (Cunningham 30). While, in the issue of age, Aries begins the Centuries of Childhood by arguing that changing notions of chronological age affected the development of Western European notions of childhood. Aries argued that the “curious passion” for recording dates and calculating ages is a recent

The concept of age by extension was quiet different at pre-1700 from today: an individual was deemed an “infant” or “youth” or an “old person” not by virtue of his chronological age but by his physical appearance and habits(Aries(1960). In child mortality, according to Aries, the high mortality rate in the premodern era caused parents to steel themselves against too emotionally to infants who might be died. Aries claim that the Europeans followed Montaigne in assuming that young children had “neither mental activity nor recognizable body shape”; that they were regarded as merely “neutral” being poised precariously between life and death(Aries 1960,39). Besides, a culture of childhood discuss that Aries argue the rise in the affection and attention paid to children has produced a kind of culture of the childhood. As an example, the seventeenth century brought a newfound interest in children's words, mispronunciations, and expression such as the French word toutou and dada(48). According to Aries, he claims in children and sex, the association of children with certain manners of