浅议儿童概念的历史成长

A Brief Discussion on the Historical Growth of the Concept of Children

摘要: “儿童”这一概念并不是随着人类存在而出现的，最开始的人们还未意识到“儿童”这一群体的存在，最先发现儿童这一群体的是欧洲。这一发现最开始从阿利埃斯的《儿童的世纪》开始算起，之后史学家主要以挑战“中世纪不存在儿童的概念”的论断为主。“儿童”这一概念的出现给史学带来了一个新的闪光点，也让儿童与成人有所区别的认识得到发展。由于受到不同经济、政治、文化、思想等多方面的影响，西方和中国对儿童概念的发现存在差异。最终也会发现“儿童”并不是被“发现”的，而是一直存在的群体，希望通过对儿童的跨文化研究，更多关注儿童，促进儿童更好发展。

Abstract: The concept of “children” did not appear with the existence of human beings, the first people did not realize the existence of the group of “children”, the first to discover the group of children is the Europe. The discovery began with Alies’s The Century of the Child, and historians have since challenged the notion that children did not exist in the Middle Ages. The emergence of the concept of “child” has brought a new point of light to history, and has also developed the understanding that children are different from adults. Due to different economic, political, cultural and ideological influences, there are differences in the discovery of the concept of children between the West and China. Eventually, it will be found that “children” are not “discovered”, but a group that has always existed. It is hoped that through cross-cultural research on children, more attention will be paid to children and better development of children will be promoted.