Title

Empathic Childrearing and the Adult Construction of Childhood: A Psychohistorical Look

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-1998

Journal / Book Title

Childhood

Abstract

The (re)construction of childhood which began in the early modern period in the West had as its primary movement a reformulation of the adult-child relation as one between very different beings. This separation, which resulted in the isolation of children from the everyday world of adults in schools and the nuclear family, is interpreted as a necessary hermeneutical moment in the adult-child relation, in which the realization of psychological difference represented a dialectical prelude to the subsequent rapprochement and dialog which deMause has characterized as the 'empathic child-rearing mode'.

DOI

10.1177/0907568298005001002

Published Citation

Kennedy, D. (1998). Empathic childrearing and the adult construction of childhood: A psychohistorical look. Childhood, 5(1), 9-22.

COinS