Childhood

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 1999

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss childhood. The 20th Century was proclaimed the Century of the Child. It has been much else but in the western world the position, the possibilities, the meaning and the story of childhood have been changed, for many, monumentally. Children join the workforce much later, they are born into smaller, usually more affluent families than a hundred years ago, they tend to spend their parents’ money rather than contributing to the family coffers, they are handed over to the school for what used to be called the best years of their lives. Children have been involved in a spectacular journey in the last hundred years. St Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: But when I became a man, I put away childish things”. But is it really as simple as that, can one always make such a clear distinction between childhood and being an adult, and is such a division even desirable?For most of this century - in the Western World - childhood has been another country with different laws and separate truths, it is something we either feel we missed or somewhere to which we long to return. Has it always been such a cherished state and do our endless machinations to keep childhood special actually help the individual? With Christina Hardyment, social historian and author of The Future of the Family; Dr Theodore Zeldin, Senior Fellow, St Anthony’s College, Oxford and author of An Intimate History of Humanity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the in our time podcast for more details about in our time and for our terms of use
0:05.4	Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program
0:12.0	Hello, so Paul wrote to the Corinthians when I was a child I spoke as a child
0:16.2	I understood as a child I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things
0:21.6	But is it really as simple as that and can one always make such a clear distinction between childhood and being an adult and is such a division even desirable?
0:29.3	For most of this century in the Western world childhood has been another country with different laws and separate truths
0:34.7	It's something we feel either that we've missed or somewhere to which we long to return
0:40.0	Has it always been such a cherished state and do our endless machinations to keep childhood special actually help the individual?
0:46.3	With me to discuss the enigma of childhood a social historian Christina Hardiman author of the future of the family and
0:52.0	Dr. Theodore Zeldin senior fellow it's an aunt in his college Oxford an author of an intimate history of humanity Christina Hardiman
0:58.8	Rousseau's manual of childhood Emil which is published towards the end of the 18th century was massively influential at the time
1:05.4	What new idea of childhood did that introduce?
1:08.5	He introduced ideas that we would take for granted today
1:12.8	He came in very strongly saying children should be free should be allowed to discover for themselves in a quite adventurous way
1:21.1	We be pretty scared by the fact that he thought children should get as cold as possible and as hungry as possible to teach them the value of these
1:28.5	Things but he was reacting against a very strict and authoritarian way of bringing up children in the same way that we're reacting against one
1:37.0	He had the idea of a natural child. What did he mean by natural at that time a couple of hundred years ago?
1:43.5	He said don't put children in swaddling bands
1:46.6	Dig them a little shallow
1:48.6	Place in the earth that they couldn't climb out of it and let them be free to play in the dust and eat mud and experiment and so on
1:55.6	He felt that they should really just be allowed to rampage around Charles Fox the English politician
2:02.0	He was a great follower of Rousseau had a little baby boy
	...

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