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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