Chapter Analysis: The History Of Childhood

In 2016, the Cobleskill, New York Police Department got a 9-1-1 call that a man with a gun was threatening customers inside a Walmart store. Arriving at the Walmart, three officers entered the store with guns drawn. Officer Joelle West found the male with a gun and approaching him ordered him to turn around, drop to his knees, and surrender the gun.

It turned out that the “man with a gun” was a 13-year-old boy who had stolen a pellet gun and began pointing it at customers. Officer West quickly handcuffed the teen and asked him what he was doing. “I want to kill people,” the boy said. The teen was escorted out of the store, taken for a mental health evaluation, and charged with petty larceny, third-degree menacing, criminal possession of

The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused” (de Mause, 1974, p. 1). Aries contends that the concept of childhood was invented in the early modern period (approximately from the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century), and this resulted in a tyrannical concept of the family which destroyed friendships and deprived children of freedom (Aries, 1962?). Yet, despite the research and views of both deMause and Aries, other scholars have suggested that childhood was regarded as a separate period of life as early as medieval Europe during the sixth through the fifteenth centuries (Berk, 2008). As evidence of this, Berk (2008) points out that medieval painters often depicted children wearing comfortable gowns, playing games, and looking up to adults. Written documents during this same time period indicated that children under the age of seven or eight were distinguished from older people, and other written texts even recognized that teenagers were not fully