In Centuries of Childhood Philippe Ariès studied the evolution of parental investment among the materially and socially privileged families of France from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. His general hypothesis, interpreted in the vocabulary of modern research, was that both the financial and emotional costs of elite childrearing were rising during this period Once greater emotional involvement led to high investments in infant survival, infant mortality declined survivorship rose, and privileged families were forced to adopt fertility control in order to avoid the production of too many very costly children. In this article Aries' verbal “model” is tested using quantitative data from both French and other European elite groups.
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