Centuries of Childhood
by Philippe Ariès · first published 1962
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1. This is an on-going debate to a certain degree (I mainly have encountered it via Phillipe Ariès's Centuries of Childhood). But I have never bought the argument that childhood is a modern invention. If you actually read primary sources from the period it is abundantly clear that parents sought to protect their children,…
on “The Medieval Mindset (2017)” ↗It's not the first time I hear about this — i.e. the book "Centuries of Childhood" by Philippe Ariès writes a bit about mentions of this habit in literature. If I remember correctly (which I may not), it mentions it was common for some period, but neither before or after. In general…
on “We used to sleep twice each night” ↗…that's bad on many levels. Marking kids as legally incapable of labor and putting them into a 20-year timeout as they engage in educational busywork solves this problem. Confession: never actually read Centuries of Childhood( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries_of_Childhood )
on “We've made the world too complicated” ↗"People in the Middle Ages don't care about their children" was a real view argued by Phillip Aries in Centuries of Childhood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries_of_Childhood
on “Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking” ↗