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In ancient cultures, as well as the Greek one, much importance was given to the formation of the citizens of the polis (to be a citizen you had to be a free man. Women and slaves were not citizens). Boys were trained to be citizens; infanticide was very common at this time. -
Infanticide was still legitimized, but was somewhat reduced to cushion the fall of the Roman population. -
Children were still treated as things. Even now, they were seen as evil (a way to justify infanticide); they were valued only for what they could contribute in labor power. -
Under an ecclesiastical doctrine at this time, children were seen as objects: they owed total obedience and respect to their parents, the latter could even sell them. -
With the beginning of humanism, human beings began to be seen above deity and those "dark" principles that came from the Middle Ages. Then, they began to worry about the children -
Children from an early age were considered suitable for heavy work in industry, helping their parents with long working hours. -
John Locke proposed this theory, which basically said that the child came into the world with nothing in his mind, that is, that what he was going to learn (customs, cultures, etc.) would depend on his environment and what he was taught. This demystified that children were bad by nature. -
Thanks to industrialization and the use of the machines, the children gradually ceased to be used for forced labour until they were old enough to do so. The role of children in society began to consolidate somewhat. -
Thanks to Rousseau and his conception of the goodness of man at birth, and his subsequent corruption by society, the perspective of childhood begins to be valued and changed. -
Kant described childhood as the inability to decide on its own, so parents had a determining role. These should form them for a better world. -
This century saw many positive events for children. They focused on the child and the importance of his upbringing in a comprehensive way, not only because of his physiological needs, but also because of his psychological and recreational needs. ¡ A light for childhood is born! -
He talked about the correlation between father-son relations and the change of society. More importance was given to the role of the child in society. -
This organization is created to ensure the fulfilment of children’s rights in a safe, caring, participatory and protective environment. However, after a Second World War, human rights violations for children remained latent. -
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. This recognition marked the first major international consensus on the fundamental principles of the rights of the child. "The child is universally recognized as a human being who must be able to develop physically, mentally, socially, morally and spiritually with freedom and dignity"-UN -
He is the father of the study of childhood in history. In his books, he expresses how the dynamics of parent-child relationships have changed over time and their importance in the construction of society. -
In the twenty-first century, many laws and treaties seek to protect children in a certain way, since they are conceived as the future of the planet. -
Currently, "certain" measures have been established for the protection of children in many countries of the world, seeking to promote "good" parenting to have better societies. However, many armed conflicts have led to the death of thousands of children; climate change has also fostered food insecurity, so today many children die from malnutrition in the world... despite being in a "developed" world, inequality is the bread of every day, so children suffer a lot on a daily basis.