childhood

Noun

childhood (plural childhoods)

1. (uncountable) The state of being a child.
2. The time during which one is a child, from between infancy and puberty.
3. (by extension) The early stages of development of something.

Derived terms

• second childhood

Childhood is the age span ranging from birth to adolescence. In developmental psychology, childhood is divided up into the developmental stages of toddlerhood (learning to walk), early childhood (play age), middle childhood (school age), and adolescence (post-puberty).

Age ranges of childhood

The term childhood is non-specific and can imply a varying range of years in human development. Developmentally, it refers to the period between infancy and adulthood. In common terms, childhood is considered to start from birth. Some consider that childhood, as a concept of play and innocence, ends at adolescence. In many countries, there is an age of majority when childhood officially ends and a person legally becomes an adult. The age ranges anywhere from 13 to 21, with 18 being the most common.

Developmental stages of childhood

Quotes regarding Childhood, a broad term usually applied to the phase of development in humans between Infant|infancy and adulthood.

See also: Children.

Sourced

• When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.
  • Guardian by Brian Aldin, 1974

Unsourced

• Childhood is a short season.
  • Helen Hayes

• Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.
  • John Betjeman

• Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.
  • Cesare Pavese

• Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath.
  • Richard S. Zera

• Childhood's over the Moment You know You're gonna Die
  • Top Dollar The Crow

• Childhood is the sleep of reason.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• He carried his childhood like a hurt warm bird held to his middle-aged breast.
  • Herbet Gold

• I was never a child. I was always a menopausal woman in a child's body.
  • Tracy Ullman

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Thu Sep 2 15:22:22 2010