Nursery World - History lessons

People in every time and place 'construct' different childhoods (James and Prout 1997; Hendrick 2003). That is, they hold certain beliefs and values that guide their behaviours and policies, which in turn reinforce or change their beliefs and behaviours about what children are and ought to be like. Historians trace the changing child, from the Puritan child whose will must be broken, through Rousseau's free romantic or natural child, to the pure evangelical child, the factory child who was either to be forced to work intensely hard or to be rescued, and the delinquent child who was supposed to be tamed into the school child.

Historians trace the changing child, from the Puritan child whose will must be broken, through Rousseau's free romantic or natural child, to the pure evangelical child, the factory child who was either to be forced to work intensely hard or to be rescued, and the delinquent child who was supposed to be tamed into the school child.

The 20th century saw the medical-psychological child (treated by doctors, analysed by psychologists, and measured by developmentalists), and the welfare child who was expected, after care from the Welfare State, to share in creating a more prosperous and fair society. 'Thatcher's children' are thought to be more selfish. Today, one model is the spending child (or parents) surrounded by possessions.

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