Conclusion

Abstract

Historians are often motivated to write about the past as a result of problems facing the contemporary world. The field of the history of childhood in the West came to form in the late twentieth century in large part because of an explosion in the public’s anxieties about how to bring up children, the nature of children, and their rights and responsibilities. Historian Hugh Cunningham articulates this phenomenon: “More, perhaps, than any other branch of history, the history of childhood has been shaped by the concerns of the world in which its historians live.”¹ Historians of childhood desire to find roots and guidance for contemporary forces (such as commercialization) that face their own children. They also hope that a historical perspective of western children (once predominantly entrenched in poverty) can contribute to the understanding of the circumstances of poverty in which most of the rest of world’s children exist today.