Lady Wombat says:

Orme writes that most people to whom he talks assume that medieval children were just little adults, that there was no sense of childhood in the past. This stems from Ariès. Subsequent researchers have proven Ariès wrong: “They have gathered copious evidence to show that adults regarded childhood as a distinct phase or phases of life, that parents treated children like children as well as like adults, that they did so with care and sympathy, and that children had cultural activities and possessions of their own” (5).

“Medieval people believed that human life progressed trough a series of stages, each with its own characteristics: ‘the ages of man.’ This belief was inherited from classical writers: not in a single form but in several versions, current alongside each other. Writers divided life into three, four, five, six, seven, or twelve periods” (6).

Orme goes on to present an overview of the lives of medieval children (from the 7th century to mid-16th, but most of his sources are from 1100-1550). In 9 chapters, he presents evidence about birth, family life, death, rhymes, play, church, learning to read, reading for pleasure, and coming of age. The book is well-written and accessible, not just for academics. It is also filled with minute detail, as well as copious illustrations that illustrate many of the claims Orme makes about childhood in the period.

Unfortunately, as Orme notes, there is little writing dating from the medieval period that references children. He argues that “we can hardly blame them for a lack of interest in childhood merely because they did not write about it. Fewer people could write, and their reasons for writing had less to do with children. When it was relevant to refer to them in coroners’ records or accounts of miracles, adults did so with the same care and consistency that they gave to themselves” (9). This is certainly true, but with so little written evidence, many of the claims Orme makes must be qualified by "seems as if," or "we can suppose," for lack of a body of evidence. Other claims seem to rest on a modern construction of childhood (for example, when he writes of a commonplace book “Several of the pieces he collected seem more appropriate for them [his children:], or for reading with them, than for him or his wife alone” [278:]). I wondered if medieval historians have a different view about what constitutes enough evidence to make an argument plausible than historians who work in later periods, with more extensive written records?

Still, an erudite, informative, an engaging study of what is currently knowable about children in the Middle Ages in England.