While children are a relatively unchanging fact of life, childhood is a constantly shifting concept. Through the millennia, the age at which a child becomes a youth and a youth becomes an adult has varied by class, religion, ethnicity, place, and economic need. Because of this, the experience of childhood and the way it is viewed widely varies. In addressing this diversity, The History of Childhood: A Very Short Introduction takes a global, expansive view of the features of childhood, focusing on conflict and change, war and reform, and the issues and conditions that have shaped childhood throughout history and continue to shape it today. From the rules of Confucian childrearing in twelfth-century China to the struggles of children living as slaves in the Americas or as cotton mill workers in Industrial Age Britain, James Marten takes his inspiration from the idea that the lives of children reveal important and sometimes uncomfortable truths about civilization.