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310 BCE
Plato
When historians struggled to explain continuity and changes through life, Plato stated that Childhood was a key factor to begin the understanding of it. -
Period: 100 BCE to 399
Antiquity
No Children protection formal laws existed, therefore infanticide was a common practice before the middle ages. Even since ancient times in Jericho, childs were mutilated. (This started in 7000BC, but for Esthetic purposes of the timeline, the start date will bu set in 100 BC) -
Period: 100 BCE to 299
Infanticidal Mode
The image of Medea hovers over childhood in antiquity, for myth here only reflects reality. Some facts are more important than others, and when parents routinely resolved their anxieties about taking care of children by killing them, it affected the surviving children profoundly. For those who were allowed to grow up, the projective reaction was paramount, and the concreteness of reversal was evident in the widespread sodomizing of the child. -
1 BCE
Illustration of how child treatment evolved from this time.
- Infanticidal Mode (Antiquity to Fourth Century AD.)
- Abandoning Mode (Fourth to Thirteenth Century A.D.)
- Ambivalent Mode (Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)
- Intrusive Mode (Eighteenth Century)
- Socializing Mode (Nineteenth to Mid-twentieth Centuries)
- Helping Mode (Begins Mid-twentieth Century)
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Period: 300 to Feb 25, 1200
Abandoning Mode
Once parents began to accept the child as having a soul, the only way they could escape the dangers of their own projections was by abandonment, whether to the wet nurse, to the monastery or nunnery, to foster families, to the homes of other nobles as servants or hostages, or by severe emotional abandonment at home. -
Period: 401 to Jan 25, 1499
Middle Ages
Major cathedrals operated education programs for small numbers of teenage boys designed to produce priests. -
442
Council of Vaison
The Council of Vaison stated that the finding of abandoned children was supposed to be announced in church, since this was a common practice around this time -
Feb 24, 787
Dateo of Milan
Dateo of Milan founded the first asylum solely for abandoned infants. -
Jul 24, 801
Sex-Ratio
The sex ratio around this time was 156-100. This means that every 100 girls, there are 156 boys. This happened because of the killing of legitimate girls since they were considered even less valuable than boys. -
Feb 24, 1100
First Universities Appeared
University of Bologna in 1088, the University of Paris in 1150 and the Oxford in 1167. Students started mostly at 13 years old, and remained for 6 to 12 years -
Period: Oct 13, 1300 to
Ambivalent Mode
Because the child, when it was allowed to enter into the parents’ emotional life, was still a container for dangerous projections, it was their task to mold it into shape. From Dominici to Locke there was no image more popular than that of the physical molding of children, who were seen as soft wax, plaster, or clay to be beaten into shape. Enormous ambivalence marks this mode. -
Feb 24, 1405
Giovanni Dominici
Giovanni Dominici´s writings in this time tried to set some limits to the convenient “innocence” of childhood; he said children after the age of three years shouldn’t be allowed to see nude adults. -
Feb 24, 1527
First Priest Admitted Infanticide
As late as 1527, one priest admitted that atrocious acts were being committed to children. -
Period: Feb 25, 1558 to
Elizabethan Era
The transmission of social norms was a family matter and children were taught basics of proper manners and respecting others. -
Robert Pennell
Robert Pennell complained in 1653 of the practice of mothers from all economy-sectors farming out their babies to irresponsible women. -
Richard Allestree
In this time, Richard Allestree stated that the child was full of sin. He said: "the new-born babe is full of the stains and pollution of sin, which it inherits from our first parents through our loins" -
John Locke created the Theory of Tabula Rasa
This theory defined a new attitude towards children. Thinking of them as separated beings that needed to be protected and nurtured. It also stated that when our mind is at birth it is at a "blank slate" without rules for processing data. Therefore, data and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences -
Period: to
Intrusive Mode
The child raised by intrusive parents was nursed by the mother, not swaddled, not given regular enemas, toilet trained early, prayed with but not played with, hit but not regularly whipped, punished for masturbation, and made to obey promptly with threats and guilt. The child was so much less threatening that true empathy was possible, and pediatrics was born, which reduced infant mortality. -
Period: to
Age of Enlightenment
The modern notion of childhood with its own autonomy began to form around this era. During this period, children's education became more common and institutionalized, in order to supply the church and state with the functionaries to serve as their future administrators. -
Severe Punishments for Masturbation
In this time, parents started to give severe punishments to their children for masturbating. Even doctors began to spread the myth that it would cause insanity, epilepsy, blindness, and death. Doctors and parents sometimes appeared before the child armed with knives and scissors, threatening to cut off the child’s genitals -
Kant stated his Conception of Pedagogy
Kant illustrated the first thoughts of Children´s problems in their early formation. -
Thomas Coram opened his Foundling Hospital
Thomas Coram opened the first Foundling Hospital because he couldn’t bear to see help-less dying babies in the streets of London. This hospital was dedicated to help this children. -
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote Emile: or, On Education.
This novel formulated the romantic attitude towards children around this Era. He described childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood. -
Sir Joshua Reynolds painted The Age of Innocence
This was one of many children portraits that clearly demonstrated the new enlightened attitudes toward young children. This painting in particular emphasized innocence and grace of children -
Child labor started to be normal
In this time, in England children were specially employed at the factories and mines and as chimney sweeps, often working long hours in dangerous jobs for low pay. -
Period: to
Socializing Mode
The socializing mode is still thought of by most people as the only model within which discussion of child care can proceed, and it has been the source of all twentieth-century psychological models. Also, in the nineteenth century, the father for the first time begins to take more than an occasional interest in the child, training it, and sometimes even relieving the mother of child-care chores. -
Ten Hours Act was passed
Child labor was attacked by reformers, and in 1833 this law was introduced to the Common. This law stated that children working in the cotton and woollen industries must be aged nine or above, no person under the age of eighteen was to work more than ten hours a day or eight hours on a Saturday, and that no one under twenty-five had to work at nights -
Friedrich Frobel created the concept of Kindergarten
This educator designed a form of education that encouraged children to learn with didactic materials which he called Froebel Gifts -
Period: to
Late 19th Century
Modern methods of public schooling, with tax-supported schools and educated teachers emerged first in Prussia in the early 19th century, and was adopted by Britain, the United States, France and other modern nations by 1900. -
Ten Hours Act was reformed
Now the law permitted only child labour past age 9 for 60 hours per week. -
Thomas Huges wrote Tom Brown's School Days
This book is considered as the founding book in school-story tradition. It marked the start of Children Literature -
Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
This book meant the change in writing style for children to an imaginative one . -
Sigmund Freud
Since Freud, our view of childhood has acquired a new dimension, and in the past half century the study of childhood has become routine for the psychologist, the sociologist, and many other disciplines. He stated the children go through 4 stages of psychosexual development: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. -
Child Labor Age was raised
In 1901, the permissible child labour age was raised to 12. -
The National Child Labor Committee was formed
This organization´s priority was abolition of TOTAL child labor in the US -
The Boy Scouts were founded by Sir Robert Baden-Powell
This new group provided young boys with outdoor activities aiming at developing character, citizenship, and personal fitness qualities. Today, many countries still support Boy Scout groups, they can even be seen in Colombia. -
Period: to
Helping Mode
The helping mode involves the proposition that the child knows better than the parent what it needs at each stage of its life, and fully involves both parents in the child’s life as they work to empathize with and fulfill its expanding and particular needs. -
Declaration of Children´s Rights
The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, also referred to as Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, promotes children rights and was adopted by the UN in 1959 -
Convention on the Rights of the Child was Signed
This convention sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. The Convention defines a child as any human being under the age of eighteen, unless the age of majority is attained earlier under national legislation. It was effective in 1990 -
Childhood Nowadays
There is no attempt at all to discipline or try to form habits by force, obligating the child .Children are neither struck nor scolded, and are apologized to if yelled at under stress. Few parents have yet consistently attempted this kind of child care. This results in a higher probability a child who is gentle, sincere and never depressed. -
References
http://psychohistory.com/books/foundations-of-psychohistory/chapter-1-the-evolution-of-childhood/ https://www.corwin.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/24504_Ch01.pdf http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/freud_sigmund.shtml http://family.jrank.org/pages/232/Childhood-Modern-Western-Conception-Childhood.html
