Childhood

Defining Children and Childhood

There is little consensus in how the terms children and childhood are defined, even among contemporary legal documents. For example, according to the 2006 Canadian Census Dictionary, children refers “to blood, step- or adopted sons and daughters (regardless of age or marital status) who are living in the same dwelling as their parent(s), as well as grandchildren in households where there are no parents present.”

Here, child has nothing to do with physical maturation, chronological age, or level of maturity. Instead, it refers to the nature of the living arrangement, which is more likely to have something to do with dependency. This seemingly has its origins in the idea that economic adulthood begins with moving out of one's parental home.

Many of the current ideas about childhood are related to parental rights and obligations toward children. But the end of parents' legal obligations to children varies considerably, depending on its jurisdiction and type; therefore, childhood's span depends on the context in which it is used, the purpose it is intended to serve, and the type and nature of interactions it involves. Childhood can refer to a chronological age range, a level of maturity, a period of physical maturation, or of economic dependency. Our definitions largely reflect assumptions about ability, power, autonomy, and dependency, which vary over time and across cultures.

Understanding Variations in Childhood

Because many children living in the past were silent or silenced by history, circumstance, lack of a public presence, powerlessness, and illiteracy, we are left with a considerable amount of speculation about the true lives of children and historical experiences in and on childhood. This has sparked theoretical debates about childhood, one of the more significant starting in the 1960s with Philippe Aries's first book, Centuries of Childhood (1962).

Medieval Indifference toward Childhood

French historian Philippe Ariès, has been recognized by many as one of the first, best-known, and most influential and controversial historians of childhood in the 20th century. Ariès argued that “there was no place for childhood in the medieval world.” He explained that he was not arguing that children were neglected or despised in the medieval world, nor that they lived lives devoid of affection, but rather that in the past people lacked the awareness of the distinctiveness of childhood apart from adulthood. He added that adults in the 10th and 11th centuries in Europe simply did not devote much time or special attention to them, as evidenced by their absence, marginalization, and adult-like depictions in portraits, and by their absence from the focus of religious festivals. He deduced that adults must not have had a distinctive conception of childhood as a separate stage in life since children were not given special emotional or legal allowances, and because they were depicted clothed as mini-adults or mingling with adults in everyday life for the purposes of work, relaxation, and sport. He also noted a lack of vocabulary in French and English for distinguishing children of different ages from one another. Children were either relegated to the margins or were fully integrated into the adult world because they were so much a part of adult life in work and leisure. An outcome of this supposition of the medieval world's indifference toward childhood was that it gave children more latitude, less monitoring, and more autonomy.

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