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Yes, that struck me too. It's one of the reasons I found the article so interesting. The idea of children as something special in their own right as children, rather than as miniature adults in waiting (or wilful beasts to be broken properly) was relatively new at the time. Certainly only a couple of generations old. Though by this time childhood was starting to be seen as special and children beginning to take on a meaning we'd more readily recognise now, you can still see the vestiges of earlier sensibilities in their language use.
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