Ariès's famous book Centuries of childhood (1962), has influenced the widely acknowledge view that the concept of childhood is a social and cultural construction. Cross-cultural and historical researches have asserted that the idea of childhood has varied across different cultures and epochs thus belying the universal conceptualizations of childhood. Hermeneutical readings of historical and sociological texts have encouraged me to construct the notion that there are children who live out their lives without childhood -both in the past and in the present. In addition to this I deconstruct the notion of "universal childhood" and make the following assertions: that in the medieval period childhood as we understand it today may not have existed; that childhood could be said to be a modern invention; that in the postmodern childhood is fast disappearing. I argue that in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, two contrasting trends emerged regarding children, viz. the notion of child centeredness (among the emerging middle classes), and increasing proletarianization of children (among the lower classes). The 20 th century has seen a reduction in child labour due to legislations regarding children, compulsory schooling and the Welfare state. Despite this, today there are millions of children living without childhood. In the 21 st century, there are one billion children still living in conditions of poverty resulting from neo-liberal policies and the unequal World order. I further argue that recovering childhood is insidiously connected as much with structural changes as economic ideologies and collective legislations.

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This article explores the intersections between discourses on children from the North and South (India as a case in point). Some similarities can be seen between Western and Indian conceptualizations with the child occupying subaltern spaces. Both in the North and South children are marginalized in sociological discourses; there is a perceived emergent decrease in patriarchal control of children by adults, with adult-child relations becoming more democratic and participatory, manifested in greater negotiation of control by children. The New Sociology of Childhood that evolved in the "Century of the Child" notable as childhood has brought children into the arena of International politics and academic debates in both the North and the South.

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