The Evolution of Childhood

History is typically defined as knowledge that records and explains past events. In this area of knowledge, children have been virtually ignored both by their contemporaries and by later historians.¹ A small, but growing number of current scholars are diligently working to resolve this imbalance. Even so, most of the history of childhood still remains hidden as the majority of research focuses on the relatively recent past of the last few centuries. While this is perfectly suitable for studying perspectives of recent history, these views fail to accommodate a more complete historical picture of childhood. Some studies have traveled further in the past, looking thousands of years ago to childhood in ancient civilizations such as Rome or Greece.² These more ancient studies provide us with a broader picture of childhood through the ages, as one can witness trends and patterns that now extend over centuries, or even millennia. But even these studies fail to do justice to the deeper history of childhood. For the deep history of childhood is not measured in centuries, or even millennia. The deep history of childhood is measured in tens, or hundreds, of millennia.³

Children have been a part of human history since, quite literally, its beginning. The human species (and thus our history) began with the first human child, who was presumably born from two very nearly, but not-quite, human parents. While there is some debate about how long ago this event occurred, it is believed to have happened between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago.⁴ This then, is the full history of childhood, and it is indeed a poorly studied history. Yet its study offers an opportunity that is as rich in potential revelations as it is in methodological challenges.

These challenges are perhaps the main reason why this area has not been well studied by historians. Simply put, these challenges revolve around the fact that we have scant methods for gathering data from even a few centuries ago, let alone many millennia ago. Historically, archaeologically, and paleontologically, physical, written, and oral data on children and childhood are neither abundant nor well preserved.⁵ For example, most ancient texts do not explicitly discuss ancient childhoods, leaving us to infer many details from indirect sources.⁶ Archaeologically, there are fewer child artifacts, and they are more poorly preserved than larger, more robust adult artifacts.⁷ The same is also true for paleontological child remains—they tend to be much more fragile and thus more poorly preserved than adult remains.⁸ But all is not lost, in that new methods, new discoveries, and new ideas are revealing an increasing understanding of childhood extending all the way back to the beginning of its history.⁹

So we may be able to get small glimpses of the deep complete history of childhood. Of what worth are these glimpses? Most importantly, they provide views of childhood that we may combine to examine the deep history of childhood. Using such a grand historical lens may reveal patterns that are simply not discernible on smaller scales. It may also enrich child history by combining it with other related disciplines. Indeed, Paula Fass makes an explicit call for child historians to consider the advantages of bringing multidisciplinary methods to bear on child history—including biological disciplines.¹⁰ A study of the deep history of childhood already combines archeology and paleontology with history, but it lacks a theory capable of unifying disparate results across cultures and time. Unification of seemingly disparate theories is one of the strengths of evolutionary theory, so I propose that evolutionary theory can offer child historians a useful tool for studying the deep history of childhood.

An evolutionary perspective is conciliatory¹¹—it can work with traditional historical methods to further the understanding of child history.¹² Thus, the goals of this paper are twofold. First, I plan to outline the potential contribution of evolutionary theory as a method of understanding child history and unifying it with other related disciplines such as anthropology and psychology. Second, I plan to offer examples of how evolutionary theory can shed light on several aspects of...