[Childhood in flux--Part II: Modern times until today]

At the end of the 19th century, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in New York, after a barbarous case of neglect and abuse of a girl became public. From then on, children received more and more protection. Only in the 1950s were doctors in the USA bound by law to report cases of putative physical abuse to officials. In Sweden, physical punishment of children has been forbidden since 1989, and in Germany since 2001. The existence of sexual abuse of children had been a taboo subject for centuries, even though individual attempts to break that taboo were made--e. g., by S. Freud in the theory of seduction (Verführungstheorie). Only with the birth of the women's liberation movement in the early 1970s has public awareness arisen. Due to the work of J. Bowlby in the 1950s, it became clear that children of primates need more than air, water and food, namely a relationship between the child and an adult person (attachment). To what degree the basic needs of children are being fulfilled in Western societies today is still a controversial issue.