political and cultural structure. It is not the case of studying the infant as such, but to tell the history of the different representations that appeared in relation with infancy at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. The pioneer reference to this type of works is represented by the still classical research conducted by historian Phillipe Ariés entitled El niño y la vida familiar en el Antiguo Régimen (1987), published in France in 1960. The central thesis of the French historian is well known and caused extensive discussion. According to Ariés, in the Middle Ages there was no defined concept of childhood, to the extent in which there was no specific area reserved for children, fact that could be observed in the absence of a literature or games especially devised for infants: “In medieval society, there was no idea of childhood; this means that, infants were disregarded, abandoned or despised. The idea of childhood must not be confused with affection for children: it is concerned with a perception of a particular nature of childhood, that particular nature discerning infant from adult, even from young adult. In the medieval society there was not such a perception” (Ariés 1987: 45). One of the sources favored by historians for doing research on their arguments were the painting of the epoch, which represented infants as “little adults” without a characteristic identity. This four decades that separate us from the text by Ariés, makes it significant to highlight that other researchers have questioned and polished up some of his main proposals. Particularly, reference is made to his overrating of some sources, mainly those coming from the painting domain, as well as the absence of a comparative equivalence with other documentary evidences. Some others have demonstrated that there was indeed a concept of childhood in other cultures other than western (Gil´Adi 1992; Archard 1993). Following the issue on the history of family, Stone (1978) has documented these 90
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insufficiencies, supported by demographic and social point of view, and from the psycho–history perspective, as well; De Mause (1982) has argued that history of childhood care and attention started in the 20th century, disdaining all previous eras. The basic counterpart of this outlook is represented by the works of Pollock (1983) who states that parents come looking after and loving their children throughout history; at least in documents from year 1500. From the field of history of culture, the trend has been from the late eighties, to recover some of the proposals by Ariés and this has opened the possibility for new debates and discussions. Such is the case of Nikolas Rose (1985) who has analyzed the origins of infantile psychology and its effects on the formation of individuals in the late 20th century in England; of Vivian Zelizer (1985) who has emphasized the recovery and revaluation process in Europe and the United States concerning childhood during the second half of the 19th century, many times in comparison to the state of insufficiencies and adversities experienced by most of childhood population; and of Peter Wright (1988) who has examined the way hygiene invented the concept of childhood by the late 19th century in England. To conclude with the succinct list we can quote the works by Anne Higonnet (1998) who has analyzed the construction of a childhood “innocent” position in the West from representation of childhood in the European romantic painting by the second half of the 18th century. It is worth stating that the arguments of the multi–quoted author were made in the early seventies in the 20th century, which presupposed an optimistic confidence about the concept of progress, very different from prevailing one in the academic and intellectual milieus where the question about cultural differences, the recovery of specific characteristics and each process originality, as well as the most skeptical reading about historic process and limitation of the concept of progress are the political –