Looking for the child in history. Voice and agency in the history of childhood.
2020 marks the 60th birthday of a book that laid the foundations for a new research field: L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime (English translation Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, 1962) by a French historian Philippe Ariès. One of the most disputed – yet influential – studies, Centuries of Childhood is famous for introducing the idea that childhood is a historical, cultural and social construct, a concept that has changed and continues to change over time. The emergence of history of childhood as a research field was closely connected to the break-through of a variety of approaches labelled as ‘new histories’ in the 1970s and 1980s, such as women’s history, new social history, and postcolonialism. Seeking to re-write ‘history from below’ (Thompson 1966), historians of childhood have been looking for ways to incorporate children and childhood in the grand narratives of history, and to historicize contemporary ideas of childhood. 60 years after Ariès history of childhood is an established field of research. However, the quest for children’s perspectives is not over. History of childhood has been influenced by interdisciplinary discussions within the wider field of Childhood Studies, including the never-ending discussion about how to address children’s agency in the past. How to reach for the distant ‘voices’ and ‘experiences’ of past children continues to be a fundamental question for researchers looking for the child in history.