Insights about children for parents from eminent writers: from Dante and Castiglione to Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell.
Behavioral science and literature have had a long and complex relationship with each other, sometimes differing and sometimes similar in ways of portraying human development. In the ancient world nature seems to have been the dominant explanation of human variations in both science and literature. That speculative philosophical view persisted into the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance among the academicians, while the best literature moved ahead by introducing the modern view of an interaction between nature and nurture. In the modern era literature began to describe the inner world of children a century before the birth of child psychology, and literature has generally continued to describe the interactions between nature and nurture without taking sides in the academic battles of science. The great wealth of insights into the origins of children's behavior in the nonscientific literature should be incorporated into the education of child health professionals because the richer understanding that it engenders would lead to better child rearing and educational practice.