The History of Childhood

The History of Childhood
  • 5.0 (2)
  • History

The History of Childhood is a tour of a cosmos: the vast, fascinating, hard-to-reach universe of childhood throughout history. Episode by episode, we assemble an archive that has never existed, collecting the lives, worlds, and artifacts of history's most overlooked people: children.

Episodes

  1. 5d ago

    10 – Thinkers of the Century – Volume 1, 16th Century

    We step into the minds of 20 thinkers from the 16th century to explore their ideas about children and childhood. Topics covered: Ambroise Paré, monsters and prodigies, and the theory of maternal imagination; Wáng Yángmíng and life-intention (shēngyì); Lǐ Zhì and the child-mind (tóngxīn); Yulgok (Yi I), establishing the will (ipji), and sagehood; Thomas More and children’s toys; Erasmus, educability, humanist pedagogy, and civility; Juan Luis Vives and the education of girls and poor children; François Rabelais, childhood insight, detrimental education, and games for children; Roger Ascham, individual differences in learning, Lady Jane Grey, and pedagogical sensitivity; Jean Bodin, child testimony in witch trials, paternal authority, and political sovereignty; Michel de Montaigne and education for living; Surdas, Braj poetry, the child Krishna, Pushtimarg, devotional service (seva), and divine play (lila); Martin Luther, grace and infant faith (fides infantium), religious education, and the boy at Dessau; Balthasar Hubmaier, believers’ baptism, infant dedication, and free will; John Calvin, original sin, and predestination; Teresa of Ávila, childhood autobiography, and childhood spirituality; Francisco de Vitoria, children’s rights, and legal personhood; Juan Huarte de San Juan, intellectual aptitude (ingenio), and social vocation; Girolamo Cardano and deaf education; Paracelsus and intellectual disability. 0:00 Ambroise Paré06:07 Wáng Yángmíng11:39 Lǐ Zhì16:45 Yulgok (Yi I)20:28 Thomas More23:10 Erasmus27:22 Juan Luis Vives31:15 François Rabelais37:38 Roger Ascham40:34 Jean Bodin43:52 Michel de Montaigne48:50 Surdas57:39 Martin Luther1:05:20 Balthasar Hubmaier1:08:40 John Calvin1:10:45 Teresa of Ávila1:14:40 Francisco de Vitoria1:18:58 Juan Huarte de San Juan1:23:30 Girolamo Cardano1:26:28 Paracelsus Selected primary sources:Paré: Monsters and Marvels (excerpts) https://www.birthingtales.org/text.php?id=17Wáng Yángmíng: Elementary Education (Chinese) https://www.shidianguji.com/book/SDZJ0013/chapter/1jmneqr8z9dlyLǐ Zhì: Childlike Mind (Chinese) https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/焚書/卷3#童心說Yulgok: Breaking Folly’s Hold https://dh.aks.ac.kr/Edu/wiki/index.php/Key_to_Breaking_Folly%27s_Hold_%E6%93%8A%E8%92%99%E8%A6%81%E8%A8%A3More: Utopia https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130Erasmus: Education of Children https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28338; Good Manners https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A00344.0001.001Vives: Christian Woman https://brittlebooks.library.illinois.edu/brittlebooks_open/books2009-06/watfor0001vivand/watfor0001vivand.pdf; Relief of the Poor https://archive.org/details/concerningrelief00viveRabelais: Gargantua https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8166Ascham: The Scholemaster https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1844Bodin: Commonwealth I https://constitution.org/2-Authors/bodin/bodin_1.htm; Demon-Mania (French) https://archive.org/details/delademonomanied00bodiMontaigne: Essays I.26 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3585Surdas: Sur’s Ocean; Memory of Love (selected poems) https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/books/suradasa-2009-memory-of-love.htmlLuther: Babylonian Captivity https://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/first_prin/first_prin.v.iii.iii.html; Table Talk (Dessau) https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/gerchange.html#dessauHubmaier: Christian Baptism of Believers; Oecolampadius letter (infant dedication) https://books.google.com/books?id=WYnZAAAAMAAJCalvin: Institutes II.1; IV.16 https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.all.htmlTeresa: Life I https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8120Vitoria: On the American Indians https://constitution.org/2-Authors/victoria/victoria_4.htmHuarte: Examination of Men’s Wits https://archive.org/details/examendeingenios1594huarCardano: De utilitate (Latin/Spanish) https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CFCL/article/download/97023/4564456570346#page=6Paracelsus: Begetting of Fools https://www.jstor.org/stable/44447230

  2. Aug 13

    09 – Chimney Sweeps – Lives in the Dark

    Small children are forced to spend their lives in chimneys in England for more than a century. Topics covered: child chimney sweeps and climbing boys; the sweeps’ May Day; Elizabeth Montagu; the Great Fire of London, flue design, and coal heating; parish apprenticeship and the Poor Laws; child indentures; the sale, hire, and lease of children; master sweeps; chimney climbing, coercion, entrapment, injury, and suffocation; contemporary comparisons with slavery; the soot trade; Percivall Pott and chimney-sweepers’ cancer; coal tar and experimental carcinogenesis; Jonas Hanway and early reform; the Chimney Sweepers Act of 1788; the Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys; George Smart’s scandiscope; reform legislation and non-enforcement; Lord Shaftesbury; George Brewster; the Chimney Sweepers Act of 1875; lucky-sweep folklore; Mary Poppins; modern May Day festivals; historical sanitization; child labor and vocation. Selected sources and further reading: The trade and apprenticeship K. H. Strange, Climbing Boys: A Study of Sweeps’ Apprentices, 1773–1875 (Allison & Busby, 1982) Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 2, “Chimney-Sweepers” (1861): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/60440/60440-h/60440-h.htm Alysa Levene, “Parish Apprenticeship and the Old Poor Law in London,” Economic History Review 63 (2010): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3175807/ Campaign, evidence, and reform Jonas Hanway, A Sentimental History of Chimney Sweepers (1785): https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-sentimental-history-of_hanway-jonas_1785 William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper,” Songs of Innocence (1789): https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/347918 “Chimney Sweepers Regulation Bill,” HL Deb 15 March 1819: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1819/mar/15/chimney-sweepers-regulation-bill Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys, Twenty-First Report (1837): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67132 “Chimney Sweepers—Question,” HC Deb 29 April 1864: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1864/apr/29/chimney-sweepers-question The Chimney Sweepers Act 1875: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/38-39/70/enacted Medicine Percivall Pott, Chirurgical Observations (1775): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pvdd4yrv H. A. Waldron, “A Brief History of Scrotal Cancer,” British Journal of Industrial Medicine 40 (1983): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1009212/ Joseph Lipsick, “A History of Cancer Research: Carcinogens and Mutagens,” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine 11 (2021): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7919401/ May Day and the cultural afterlife Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48983/48983-h/48983-h.htm George L. Phillips, “Mrs. Montagu and the Climbing-Boys,” Review of English Studies 25 (1949) Mary Poppins, directed by Robert Stevenson (Walt Disney Productions, 1964), including “Chim Chim Cher-ee” and “Step in Time,” music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman: https://movies.disney.com/mary-poppins

  3. Aug 8

    08 – The Nutcracker – Children and Ballet

    A German Romantic fairy tale becomes a Russian imperial ballet with children at its center. Topics covered: The Nutcracker; E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”; German Romanticism; The Sandman, automata, and the uncanny; Alexandre Dumas’s adaptation; Erzgebirge nutcrackers; Ore Mountains mining and toy making; Seiffen and Reifendrehen; children’s work in Erzgebirge toy production; Walter Benjamin on toys; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s childhood; Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album; the composition of the Nutcracker score; the Miniature Overture, the celesta, and the Grand Pas de Deux; Marius Petipa; Lev Ivanov; the Cecchetti method; the Imperial Theatre School; child dancers in the Imperial Ballet; Tamara Karsavina; Mathilde Kschessinska; Stanislava Belinskaya; classical ballet training; turnout and pointe work; Louis XIV and the origins of classical ballet; the child protagonist; children as performers and spectators; the 1892 premiere and reception; adult casting of child roles; Alexander Gorsky and Vasily Vainonen; George Balanchine’s 1954 production; The Nutcracker in American ballet. Selected sources and further reading: Original stories and toys E. T. A. Hoffmann, Nutcracker and Mouse-King (1816; English translation, 1853): https://archive.org/details/nutcrackermousek00hoff Alexandre Dumas, Histoire d’un casse-noisette (1844/45): https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10842759j Walter Benjamin, “Old Toys” and “The Cultural History of Toys,” in Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 1: 1927–1930(Harvard University Press, 1999): https://hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674015883 Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, “The German Toymakers of the Erzgebirge”: https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/german-toymakers-erzgebirge Tchaikovsky and the imperial ballet Roland John Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker (Oxford University Press, 1985): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/tchaikovskys-ballets-9780198162490 Tchaikovsky Research, “The Nutcracker”: https://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/The_Nutcracker Roland John Wiley, The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov: Choreographer of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake (Oxford University Press, 1997): https://academic.oup.com/book/49304 Children, dancers, and training Tamara Karsavina, Theatre Street: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina (1930): https://archive.org/details/theatrestreetthe010053mbp Mathilde Kschessinska, Dancing in Petersburg (1960): https://archive.org/details/dancinginpetersb00kshe Weiss, Rist, and Grossman, “When Can I Start Pointe Work? Guidelines for Initiating Pointe Training,” Journal of Dance Medicine & Science 13 (2009): https://iadms.org/media/2842/iadms-resource-paper-guidelines-for-initiating-pointe-training.pdf Production history and preservation Harvard Theatre Collection, Nikolai Sergeev Dance Notations and Music Scores for Ballets, 1888–1944: https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.Hough:hou01987 George Balanchine Foundation, “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker”: https://balanchine.com/Ballet/george-balanchines-the-nutcracker Jennifer Fisher, Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World (Yale University Press, 2003): https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105995/nutcracker-nation Music credits Kevin MacLeod, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” excerpted for commentary and analysis; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, “March” from The Nutcracker Suite, performed by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. Brief excerpts used for commentary and analysis.

  4. Aug 3

    07 – AMBER Alerts and Child Abuse – Harm and Alarm

    We explore the history of child protection and endangerment in the United States. Topics covered: the making of the AMBER Alert system; Amber Hagerman; CONELRAD and Cold War emergency broadcasting; child abduction; family abduction; child abuse and neglect; child protective services; the Adverse Childhood Experiences study; Mary Ellen Wilson, Etta Wheeler, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the founding of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; John Caffey, C. Henry Kempe, and the battered-child syndrome; mandatory reporting; missing-child statistics; the bogeyman; Plato's Phaedo and the mormolukeia; John Locke on education and child subjection; Goya's Que viene el Coco; Struwwelpeter; Etan Patz, Adam Walsh, and milk-carton missing children; 1980s stranger danger; moral panic; crime-control theater; child-abuse hotlines; family privacy; parental authority; children's autonomy. Selected sources and further reading: AMBER Alerts and missing children NCMEC, 2025 AMBER Alert Report: https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/2025_Annual_AMBER_Alert_Report.pdf Griffin, Williams & Kadleck, "AMBER Alert Effectiveness Reexamined," Criminal Justice Policy Review 33 (2022): https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211026366 Sedlak et al., National Estimates of Missing Children (OJJDP, 2002): https://ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/196465.pdf Hammer, Finkelhor & Sedlak, Runaway/Thrownaway Children (OJJDP, 2002): https://ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/196469.pdf Wolak, Finkelhor & Sedlak, Child Victims of Stereotypical Kidnappings Known to Law Enforcement in 2011 (OJJDP, 2016): https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh176/files/pubs/249249.pdf Amber: The Girl Behind the Alert (Peacock, 2023) Child maltreatment HHS, Child Maltreatment 2024: https://acf.gov/cb/report/child-maltreatment-2024 Kim et al., "Lifetime Prevalence of Investigating Child Maltreatment," AJPH 107 (2017): https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303545 CDC, "Adverse Childhood Experiences Among High School Students," YRBS 2023: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a5.htm Felitti et al., ACE Study, Am J Prev Med 14 (1998): https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8 Stoltenborgh et al., "Prevalence of Child Maltreatment across the Globe," Child Abuse Review 24 (2015): https://doi.org/10.1002/car.2353 Histories and studies Caffey, "Multiple Fractures…" (1946); Kempe et al., "The Battered-Child Syndrome" (1962) Shelman & Lazoritz, The Mary Ellen Wilson Child Abuse Case (2005); Watkins, "The Mary Ellen Myth" (1990) Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives (1988); Pleck, Domestic Tyranny (1987) Szymanski, "Child Abuse, Policy Communities, and Frame Contestation During the Progressive Era" (2019) Pollock, Forgotten Children (1983); deMause, ed., The History of Childhood (1974) Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) Primary texts Plato, Phaedo 77d–e; Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education §138; Goya, Que viene el Coco (1799)

  5. Aug 1

    06 – Abraham Jacobi – Politics and Pediatrics

    A radical doctor escapes prison in Europe and brings his political passion to New York, saving countless infants' lives and helping to build American pediatrics. Topics covered: Abraham Jacobi, infant mortality, American pediatrics, urban industrialization, political exile, New York City, Lower East Side tenements, swill milk, the summer complaint, infant feeding, children in medicine, milk depots, public health reform, eugenics, political materialism.

  6. 10/13/2025

    05 – Toys of the Century – Volume 1, 20th Century

    What makes a toy historic? It doesn't just change play — it inaugurates a new world. Topics covered: Action figures, Barbie, construction sets (Meccano, Erector, LEGO), die-cast cars (Matchbox, Hot Wheels), Frisbee, G.I. Joe, Nerf, Play-Doh, teddy bear, water guns.

  7. 09/29/2025

    04 – Enslaved and Emancipated – A Child of the Civil War

    We witness the end of the American Civil War through the eyes of a boy born into slavery. Topics covered: enslaved childhood, childhood memory, Virginia plantation life, the American Civil War, emancipation, the postbellum South, child labor, education after emancipation, the antebellum South, slaveholding paternalism, infantilization/childrenization of enslaved people, childhood autonomy.

  8. 09/23/2025

    03 – Child Sacrifice Narratives – Questioning the Evidence

    Where do the stories of child sacrifice come from, and how believable are they? Topics covered: child sacrifice, the Aztec and Maya, Spanish colonial narratives, Seville’s foundling wheel, the Carthaginian tophet, Roman child-sacrifice narratives, Celts and Druids, colonial and missionary narratives in Africa and the Pacific, Minoan Crete, Shang China oracle bones, the story of Abraham and Isaac, Inca capacocha, Johan Reinhard, the Llullaillaco children, postcolonial archaeology, sensational archaeology, the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta, museum display ethics.

  9. 09/17/2025

    02 – Onfim – Children's Art, Medieval and Modern

    The earliest signed art in the West is not by Giotto — it's by a 6-year-old boy from medieval Novgorod. In the 20th century, modernists discover new possibilities in children's art. Topics covered: Onfim, the Middle Ages, birch-bark drawings, children's art, Franz Cizek, modern art, Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, Walter Benjamin, children and war. Referenced: Onfim's warrior drawing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim#/media/File:Онфим_(200).gif Paul Klee's Angelus Novus https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Paul_Klee_~_Angelus_Novus_~_1920.jpg Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html

  10. 09/04/2025

    01 – Qafzeh 11 – The Oldest Child We Know

    We begin in Qafzeh Cave, 90,000 years ago, to meet the oldest child we know. Topics covered: Qafzeh 11, the Middle Paleolithic, intentional burial, childhood trauma and disability, prehistoric relationships, animal symbolism.

  • 10 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

The History of Childhood is a tour of a cosmos: the vast, fascinating, hard-to-reach universe of childhood throughout history. Episode by episode, we assemble an archive that has never existed, collecting the lives, worlds, and artifacts of history's most overlooked people: children.

Information

  • Creator
    The History of Childhood
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The History of Childhood
  • Show Website
    The History of Childhood