ISBN The History of Childhood: A Very Short Introduction 144 pages English

While children are a relatively unchanging fact of life childhood is a constantly shifting concept. Through the millennia the age at which a child becomes a youth and a youth becomes an adult has varied by gender class religion ethnicity place and economic need. As author James Marten explores in this Very Short Introduction so too have the realities of childhood each life shaped by factors such as education expectation and conflict (or lack thereof). Indeed ancient Roman children lived very differently than those born of today's Generation Z. Experiences of childhood have been shaped in classrooms and on factory floors in family homes and orphanages and on battlefields and in front of television sets. In addressing this diversity The History of Childhood: A Very Short Introduction takes a global expansive view of the features of childhood that have shaped childhood throughout history and continue to shape it now. From the rules of Confucian childrearing in twelfth-century China to the struggles of children living as slaves in the Americas or as cotton mill workers in Industrial Age Britain Marten takes his inspiration from the idea that the lives of children reveal important and sometimes uncomfortable truths about civilization.