The Long Way Back to Ourselves

4.4

The Invention of Childhood

This episode starts with the fact that a woman needed five to seven children to hold a population steady, then tests historian Philippe Ariès's claim that medieval Europe had no concept of childhood. It shows the claim fails: diaries reviewed by historian Linda Pollock reveal parents recording first words and grieving children for years, while paintings of children as miniature adults reflect artistic convention, not perception. You also learn of children leaving home at ten to fourteen to work as servants for years, a stage of life with no name in our language. It dismantles Neil Postman's theory that childhood was invented by print and ended by television, noting schooling and child labor bans arrive centuries after Gutenberg, with industrialization.