Introduction

This book investigates a forgotten chapter of history: the role of Italian sciences within the child study movement. Between the 1880s and the First World War, children became the focus of unprecedented professional and scientific interest in Europe and the United States. The bodies and psyches of children, their care and growth, their development, ''normal'' and ''abnormal'', intelligence, and moral sense, constituted a new field of research. Italy, which had just become a nation, also took part in this international movement: on the study of the child, a substantial part of the Italian ruling class launched itself, with a mixture of enthusiasm, hope and concern, on the frontier between different areas of knowledge. Using a broad spectrum of sources, this book offers the first overview of the Italian scientific movement of child study.