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Centuries of Childhood
The history of childhood is one of multiplicity — so why do we tell parents such simplistic stories about it?
For instance, this statement appeared in The Times of India last year: “In hunter-gatherer societies, communal living ensured that infants were never alone, receiving proximate, sensitive, and responsive care.” Although it’s sometimes claimed online that “individualistic” western societies are the only ones in which mothers and babies don’t typically sleep in the same bed, that isn’t what the history or anthropology of childhood actually shows us. I remember reading Ariès’ book in a graduate school seminar and pushing back almost instinctively against this idea that key aspects of the concept of childhood were a modern invention.
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