Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult. In the seventeenth century, however, the child, or at least the ...child of quality, whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the grown-up. This is the essential point: henceforth he had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set him apart from the adults. These can be seen from the first glance at any of the numerous child portraits painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Success matters very much to the under-six age group. These children want so desperately to be able to hold their heads high. They... sound exceedingly boastful: "I can count up to five...." "I can tie my shoes...." "I know how old I am. Do you want to see...?" Each child maintains his own public relations office. He is continuously concerned with getting his name and his skill and his knowledge and his power into the "headlines." But we mustn't be misled by this drumbeating. The bombast is as much for the child's benefit as for ours--he can't quite believe his own importance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You just can't predict the course of friendship among girls at this age [9ââ¬â12]. There's a need--varying in intensity ...according to the individual--for Gibraltar-like attachments in this betwixt-and-between period. Impressive sophistication and maturity exist side by side with fearsome anxiety about the changing body, the person-to-be. The "best friends" are anchors against these tides of confusion. . . . Girls need the support and backing of a group to relieve their anxieties about who they are and who they're going to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the i...ndividual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The family is both a biological and a cultural group. It is biologic in sense that it is the best arrangement for begetting childr...en and protecting them while they are dependent. It is a cultural group because it brings into intimate association persons of different age and sex who renew and reshape the folkways of the society into which they are born. The household serves as a "cultural workshop" for the transmission of old traditions and for the creation of new social values.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Think about the pressure to "pass" by lying about one's age ... that familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one's birth or ...identity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented "passing" as a term, Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art, and the sexual closet continues the punishment, but pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of "passing," with the least organized support for "coming out" as one's true generational self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full pe...riod, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled ...business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside--from othe...rs. We do not accept it willingly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »