Preface ix
1. Introduction: childhood in world history 1
2. Childhood in agricultural societies: the first big changes 17
3. Childhood in the classical civilizations 28
4. Childhood in postclassical world history: the impact of religious change 45
5. Contacts and contrasts in the postclassical world 56
6. Forces of change and the modern model of childhood: developments in the West, eighteenth century to 1914 71
7. Alongside the modern model: the pressures of colonialism 84
8. Modern childhood in Asia: Japan adapts the new model 92
9. Childhood and communist revolutions 102
10. Childhood in the affluent societies, twentieth and twenty-first centuries 114
11. The dislocations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: children face war and violence 133
12. Globalization and childhoods 143
13. The dilemma of children's happiness 156
14. Conclusion: childhoods from past toward future 164
References 174
Index 175