Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (French: L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime; English: lit.

"The Child and Family Life in the Ancien Régime[1]) is a 1960 book on the history of childhood by French historian Philippe Ariès known in English by its 1962 translation.

[3] Ariès argues that childhood was not understood as a separate stage of life until the 15th century, and children were seen as little adults who shared the same traditions, games, and clothes.

[3] Despite the book's fame for its thesis, Centuries of Childhood focuses more on the beginnings of systematized schooling and the decline of a common public sociability.

[3] This focus extends from the author's greater criticism of modern life and its schism of social elements he saw to be once united: "friendship, religion, [and] profession".

Writing for The American Historical Review in 1998, Hugh Cunningham states that the book's influence "remains profound" after forty years, especially with respect to medieval childhood.

[2] He added that Ariès successfully persuaded his readers that the experience of childhood and its treatment as a stage of life had evolved across time and place.

[4] Slate's Stephen Metcalf describes an "anti-Arièsist" cottage industry whose most notable practitioners include historians Steven Ozment and Nicholas Orme.