The Youth of Centuries of Childhood

Abstract

Centuries of Childhood was first published in 1960,1 which means it has just completed its twenty-first year. It is a book much concerned with the way the stages of life are, and are not, divided; and this makes it particularly appropriate, now that it has just crossed the traditional dividing line into adulthood, to look back on the twenty-one years of its infancy and youth, and also to speculate on its prospects for further longevity. The biography of only a few books would be of any general interest. Centuries of Childhood is one of those books, because it has played a formative role in the development of two of the preoccupations of this generation's historiography: the history of the family, obviously, but also histoire des mentalites. It is this double filiation which marks the uniquely strategic location of the work.