A Study For Experience Of Childhood In England During Sixteenth And Seventeenth Century

This article, directed by historical materialism, made a study deeply and meticulously on the experience of childhood in Tudor and Stuart England. Children’s daily life is a hotspot of research on Children’s history. Children’s status was weak in the history of a long time. As it was an important period from feudalism to capitalism in 16 th and 17 th Centuries, the children became of the important part of the family and society. Now that the children’s social status was important than before, then What about the children’s daily life in different classes? How did the society and family take more attention to children? What are the symbols and features for being an adult? These are the problems need to be analyzed in this paper.In the introduction, I tried to analyze the history of childhood and concept of children in my view. This paper is divided into five sections. The first section mainly discusses the essential factors which influenced children’s life from three aspects: the right of succession, the social hierarchy and the sexual distinction. I discussed the children’s family life from three aspects: the family activities, the parent-child relationship and the symbol for being adult. The third section is about children’s education from three aspects: the primary school, the grammar school and the university. In the forth section, I introduced the children’s living conditions as a servant or apprentice out of their family. At last, I tried to explore the significance of social policy for vagrants’ children and illegitimate. To draw a conclusion, the study on these problems can deepen the understanding of the childhood during this period in England and find out a common rule for the welfare policy in our reforming Country.