State of the Field: The Modern History of Childhood

Abstract

This state of the field article presents three questions for students and scholars of childhood: first, who is included in the history of childhood? Second, why does the history of childhood matter? Third, how should we do the history of childhood? It argues that all historians of childhood need to reflect upon modern developmental concepts of childhood which purport to tell us what children of different chronological ages can think, understand and feel. These limiting concepts of childhood originate from eighteenth-century Anglo-American concepts of liberal personhood that position children as non-people due to their lack of reason and their dependence on others. However, as ‘childhood studies’ scholars have shown, they still govern many of our instincts and assumptions about childhood today. Historians of childhood will have most to offer once we have interrogated our own concepts of childhood, but also when we fully consider how childhood has been historically constructed in relation to adulthood.