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The Times Literary Supplement, reviewing
the French edition of Centuries of Childhood in 1960,
called it "a most valuable and important contribution...
its insights open new doors for intellectual excitement
and curiosity."
The theme of this extraordinary book is
the emergence of the modern conception of family life and
the modern image of the nature of children. The discovery
of childhood as a distinct phase in life, M. Aries shows,
is a recent event. Until the end of the Middle Ages, the
child was, almost as soon as he was weaned, regarded as
a small adult, who mingled, competed, worked, and played
with mature adults. Only gradually did parents begin to
encourage the separation of adults and children, and a new
family attitude, oriented around the child and his education,
appeared.
M. Aries traces this metamorphosis through
the paintings and diaries of four centuries, the history
of games and skills, and the development of schools and
their curricula. Ironically, he finds that individualism,
far from triumphing in our time, has been held in check
by the family and that the increasing power of the tightly
knit family circle has been gained at the expense of the
open, rich-textured communal society of earlier times. But
if the emphasis on the child and the home has meant a loss
of social diversity, it has also provided a means for men
to escape the unbearable solitude of modern life.
Though Centuries of Childhood deals
primarily with the family, the child, and the school in
pre-nineteenth-century France and England, it is undoubtedly
destined to have a seminal influence on the study of contemporary
social institutions in America as well. And M. Aries is
that rare phenomenon: a serious scholar who writes so colorfully
and engagingly that he cannot help attracting the ordinary
reader as well as the many specialists who will find his
book a rich source of ideas and inspiration.
Philippe Aries, born in Blois, France,
in 1914, is a cultural historian who ranges widely over
many fields -- sociology, biology, politics, and economics
-- in his efforts to discover the realities of the daily
life of men in past eras. After completing his studies in
history at the Sorbonne in 1939, he deliberately abandoned
a prospective academic career, and in 1943 he became director
of documents and publications for the Institute of Applied
Research for Tropical and Subtropical Fruits, a post he
has continued to hold while pursuing his historical studies.
Among his several earlier books are Les Traditions sociales
dans le pays de France, Histoire des populations
francaises et de leurs attitudes devant la Vie depuis le
XVIIIe siecle, and Le Temps de l'Histoire. He
is also the general editor of Librairie Plon's excellent
series Civilisations d"Hier et d"Aujourd'hui,
of which this volume is a title.
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