When I look back on my own childhood in the 1970s and 1980s and compare it with children today, it reminds me of that famous sentence "The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there" (from L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between). Even in a relatively short period of time, I can see the enormous transformations that have taken place in children's lives and in the ways they are thought about and treated.2 Looking further back I can see vast differences between contemporary and historical childhoods. Today, children have few responsibilities, their lives are characterized by play not work, school not paid labour, family rather than public life and consumption instead of production. Yet this is all relatively recent. A hundred years ago, a 12 year old working in a factory would have been perfectly acceptable. Now, it would cause social services' intervention and the prosecution of both parents and factory owner.
When I look back on my own childhood in the 1970s and 1980s and compare it with children today, it reminds me of that famous sentence "The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there" (from L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between). Even in a relatively short period of time, I can see the enormous transformations that have taken place in children's lives and in the ways they are thought about and treated.<br>2 Looking further back I can see vast differences between contemporary and historical childhoods. Today, children have few responsibilities, their lives are characterized by play not work, school not paid labour, family rather than public life and consumption instead of production. Yet this is all relatively recent. A hundred years ago, a 12 year old working in a factory would have been perfectly acceptable. Now, it would cause social services' intervention and the prosecution of both parents and factory owner.
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