Aries Early Childhood

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The first question that arises from the titles quote, ‘what children mean to adults?’ It is a crucial aspect to understand what children mean as they are represented by adults. A myth, a fiction that adults have constructed, both have become symbolically central to peoples culture and psychologically crucial to everyone’s sense of self. Usually people think that ‘the child’ has a clear chronological meaning, which openly relates to biological development. There hasn’t been any universal agreement when a child stops to be a child and becomes an adult, whereas there are varies different contradictory meanings within one’s culture (Gittins, 1998).
Children are seen to be happy, carefree, innocent and something seen as ‘irretrievably lost’ (Gittins, …show more content…
Ariés study claims and argued ‘the idea of childhood did not exist’ in medieval Europe (King, 1981) and was not discovered until after the middle ages. He first drew this attention to this idea being socially and historically constructed then biological or natural. According to Ariés during the medieval times children at age 7 were considered to be little adults. Spirituality of the Roman Catholic 7 was the age of reason, where a child could begin to commit serious crimes. Ariés overlooked this by pointing out that most young people generally entered the ‘adult world’ by becoming an apprentice, working in the fields and later working in factories in a very early age. Children were representation in some medieval artwork dressed in adult clothing, as the medieval art portrayed childhood showing there was no place for it in the civilization (Heywood, 2001). The most common portrayal of a child in medieval art was o the picture of Jesus in numerous paintings of the Madonna and Child. Ariés say’s “medieval art until the twelfth century did not know childhood or did not attempt to portray” (Ariés, 1960, pp. …show more content…
Many people thought their ideas and practices concerning childhood are considered to be ‘natural’, knowing that other societies were separate from theirs they were shocked. Childhood in medieval times tended to see children having emotions and any significance from their parents, suggesting that parents especially fathers had minimal emotional ties to their children. The impacts on children’s illness or death, parents were not really affected (Clarke, 2010). This didn’t mean that Ariés was arguing that there was no affection for children, he was just pointing out that there’s a difference in people having no idea on childhood and caring for their children. The crucial role Ariès played by the development of schooling, primarily for the male children of the higher class. Going to school was seen to be providing a separate period for children between infancy and adult life, as this gradual grew the basis for defining a new idea of childhood. Ariés meant that childhood is socially constructed, which may be defined as “a theoretical perspective that explores the ways in peoples interactions and through sets of discourses” (James & James, 2008, pp. 122). Eventually middle class boys got special treatment by getting education, after two or three
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