The History of Childhood

Lloyd deMause's team of investigators gives a vast portrait of childhood through the ages. With often horrifying detail they show how the conditions for children have changed, usually at glacial speed. They refer constantly to eyewitnesses of the past, who testify to what childhood was, or who instruct parents in the wisdom their age. And much of this traditional advice is absolutely chilling. As the centuries crawl by we see a pitifully gradual improvement in the way children are treated or trained. We watch an accumulation of almost imperceptible shifts in expectations for mothers and fathers. The right of fathers to inflict abuse including the death penalty on their offspring, the arranged child betrothals, the naming of children after their parents, or the caste-like molding of kids to their family professions, all slowly fade, while other experiments in child rearing arise. The children so abysmally neglected in most works of history take center stage. And the tale they tell is damning, yet filled with hope.

This revolutionary book impacted not only childhood history but history in general, as well as psychology and the hybrid field of psychohistory. The scholarly contributions remain essential reading for those who wish to look candidly at the past and the introduction by deMause is simply epochal. His view that adult and social violence have their origins in childhood has been vindicated by the most important studies of the subject, including James Gilligan's "Violence," Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes's "Why They Kill," and Anna Motz's groundbreaking study of female violence "The Psychology of Female Violence," the latter two having drawn on the works of deMause. Accordingly, this book is important not only for understanding our past, but as an indicator of where much fruitful scholarship is going to be done in the future. This work has rightly been praised by such noted historians as William Langer, Past President of the American Historical Association, and Rudolph Binion, as well as many luminaries from the field of psychology including psychiatrist Morton Schatzman, and eminent therapists like Reuben Fine and Alice Miller, who has drawn extensively on deMause's work. I concur with the New York Review of Books that this work is "Brilliant...bold...challenging." I would also add "indispensable." I cannot recommend this work too highly.

The key chapter is a long article by Demause that reviews the history of childhood pretty much for the last 2000 years. This is a very useful and disturbing overview, replete with quotations and citations. Demause has a specific psychological theory to explain this history, but even those who may be less sure of the reasons for the historical developments will find the article exceptionally useful. Personally, I didn't find the other articles in the book nearly as useful as Demause's--but his piece is so long and good that it could be a book itself. Really an eye-opener.

This book should be REQUIRED reading by every adult the world over. This author is painfully revealing about the TRUTH of sexual abuse throughout "human" history (many "humans" don't deserve the name). He speaks of the utterly unspeakable in ways the average, innocent reader would rather not believe. Do not allow Denial to get in the way of your Intelligence. Read this book with a heavily open mind and TAKE IT IN. It is tough but the truth revealed is better than a lie hidden.