History of Childhood

Childhood is usually understood as a set of experiences and behaviours, gained in the early stages of the human existence, considered as the preparation for the adult world. However, the history of childhood is a very complex topic and it has become a very influential area of study in recent years. In 1962, the ‘Centuries of Childhood’ by Philippe Ariés introduced the idea that childhood was a new creation developed in recent centuries and as a concept it was believed to be nonexistent before the seventeenth century. This concept means that there was no awareness of the process of childhood. In several studies of the medieval period, Ariés noticed that childhood was not acknowledged or even attempted to be portrayed during this period. For instance, in art during the tenth century, artists were unable to depict a child, except as a man on a smaller scale. It is hard to state how long childhood lasts or even what it means; the common kernel of many studies on childhood is the attempts to understand its nature, to define the core of being a child and to relate this to the experience of life. The main concern of this essay is to understand the meaning of childhood and childhood innocence in the Romantic Period, and in turn to analyze and see how William Blake perceived it in his poetry.

During the eighteenth century the idea of childhood entered romantic ideology. Prior to the eighteenth century, society expected a child to follow an adult behavior, where emotional demonstrations of any kind were severely punished, and there was no allowance of childhood emotions as outbursts of joy, excitement or anger. When a child had no more need of his mother he belonged directly to the adult world and behaved accordingly, that is how childre...

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...he notion of childhood has changed throughout time and that conception of how a child should act or be over the decades has turned into an ideology of child-centeredness. He believes that once the established childhood began to emerge, its ideals and surroundings started to change in society too. However, Bob Corbett (1985) states that if childhood was a creation made by Society and children acted as they were expected to, the new concept of childhood would change how children acted and make them act as society presently wanted them to act. During the Romantic period a new concept of childhood arose, this was the key factor do determine this modern approach which emphasized the innocence and the individuality of the children, giving relevance to the way how children from both gender should be educated and the way parents should approach and treat their children.