Childhood and Child Rearing

During the last two centuries, even amid poverty and war, more children have had the opportunity for successful lives than ever before. The modern concern for child health, education, and well-being, however, emerged only after long millennia in which children's welfare was subordinated to the needs and goals of caretakers and communities—a pattern also encountered today in developing regions of the world. In recent decades, scholars have gained considerable understanding of the experience of children, as well as attitudes toward childhood in the premodern world.