Discuss the conflicting view of medieval childhood presented by Philippe Aires and Nicholas Orme. In what area do the researchers appear to be of the same opinion?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• This view of medieval childhood was shaped by Philippe Aries, whose book Centuries of Childhood is considered a classic of historical scholarship.
• Aries argued that most young people were apprenticed, became agricultural or factory workers, and generally entered adult society at a very early age According to Aries, high infant mortality rates kept parents emotionally detached from their children.
• Paintings of the time depict children as mini-adults who were sent off to work as soon as they were capable.
• Western culture did not have a sense of childhood as a distinct period of life until the very late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Historian Nicholas Orme puts forth evidence that medieval children may have been valued by their parents and did experience a prolonged period of childhood.
• In his Medieval Children, Orme finds that the medieval mother began to care for her children even before their delivery.
• Royal ladies borrowed relics of the Virgin Mary from the church to protect their unborn children, while poorer women used jasper stones or drawings of the cross, which were placed across their stomachs to ensure a healthy and uneventful birth.
• Parents associated their children's birthdays with a saint's feast day.
• Medieval children devised songs, rhymes, and games. Some simple games made use of cherry pits or hazelnuts, but children also had toys, which included dolls and even mechanical toys made for royalty.
• Though their lives were quite different, children of the affluent, landholding classes also assumed adult roles at an early age. Girls born into aristocratic families were educated at home and married in their early teens. A few were taught to read, write, and do sufficient mathematics to handle household accounts in addition to typical female duties such as supervising servants and ensuring the food supply of the manor.