A History of Children: A Socio-Cultural Survey Across Millennia

(Hardback)

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A History of Children investigates the treatment of children throughout the millennia, examining and comparing, in the timeline from prehistory to the present, cultural codes, and societal laws. A recurrent theme in the book is the unchanging, immutable nature of childhood despite epochal and societal differences in birth rituals, education, puberty rituals, inheritance laws, child labor legislation, cultural customs, and historical events that have affected the lives of children over the last 5000 years. Despite the cruelties of infanticide, abandonment, and slavery that continue to have a presence in the modern world, the love and regard for children have not changed drastically. The authors reveal the impact of laws, religions, pedagogues, medicine, advocates, and the rogues of history--plagues, tyrants, wars, superstitions, poverty and famines--on the lives of children. They paint a composite portrait of the child within the broad swatches of early civilizations, the Classical and Patristic periods, the medieval and Renaissance epochs, the Reformation, Revolutionary periods, and the past century--all with the intent to inform the reader of the past and to prepare for the future.

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Author Bio

A. R. COLN is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine. His career in academic medicine spans over thirty years, during which time he taught pediatrics and lectured nationally and internationally on pediatric diseases, child development, and health. He has authored several books on pediatric topics, including one on pediatric aphorisms, The Book of Children and Nurturing Children: A History of Pediatrics (Greenwood Press, 1999). P. A. COLN is a freelance writer who has collaborated with A. R. Coln on several publications of pediatric interest, including Nurturing Children: A History of Pediatrics (Greenwood Press, 1999).