cover image Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History

Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History

Barbara A. Hanawalt. Oxford University Press, USA, $35 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-19-508405-4

Hanawalt, in her edifying, spirited book, shows that contrary to accepted scholarship on the subject, the middle ages acknowledged that childhood and adolescence were stages of life and that youngsters were to be protected and educated. Researching documents pertaining to apprenticeship contracts, wardship arrangements, wills and the like, and in manuals on child-rearing and deportment, the author, a history professor at the University of Minnesota, presents caregivers' concerns toward their charges. If beating was considered more effective than scolding, and males had a higher social value, chilhood, at least among the gentry and merchant classes, was not markedly different from our own day. Female-headed households were common, as were families with stepchildren; climbing the social ladder was encouraged. For both sexes, the transition from childhood to adolescence was denoted by entry into service or apprenticeship--by the 15th century, at ages 16 to 18. Documentation on the less privileged classes is scant, but among the affluent, children, in Hanawalt's reading, were allowed to be children. Illustrated. (Nov.)