This study brings together historians of childhood. Within a chronological focus, stretching from the 1600s up until the 1960s, historical materials as diverse as state papers, legal records, diaries, letters and oral sources are used to probe a series of key issues. This study raises important issues about the definition of "the child" and explores the formation of identity and the emotional world of childhood and throws fresh light on the changing attitudes of the state to family intimacy, and parent-child relations, the sexuality of children, children and authority and children and crime.