American and Western European culture today is very child centric. Taking note of the myriad products advertised for children and their parents, as well as the countless “how to” advice in all types of media on how to wean, feed, sleep train, potty train, dress, educate, discipline, speak to, and regard children, it is apparent that modern Western children are very much atop a hypothetical pedestal. Perceptions and treatment of children affects economies, healthcare systems, educational practices, politics, the arts and nearly all facets of life. In this literature review, these subjects are addressed to understand how children and the concept of childhood contributed to the social structure of people in Western Europe during the Medieval and Renaissance Eras and how that has changed in modernity. With the premise that, by understanding our past can we better prepare for our future, each of the aforementioned issues from weaning to politics matters. Examining historical research on childhood, including primary art and literary sources, clarifies known trends and brings to light new concepts. Claims famously made by Philippe Ariès in the 1960’s and 70’s that childhood as we understand it did not exist in the Middle Ages have since been challenged by contemporary historians and cultural anthropologists. These varying notions invite comparisons and challenges of long-lasting assumptions as well as new suppositions.

Public Perception surrounding the sexual exploitation of adolescent girls in history is marred by the manipulation of social elite classes. Bestselling books on Madame De Pompadour, the royal mistress to King Louis XV, falsely claim Madame De Pompadour facilitated a brothel of adolescent poor girls for her royal lover to sexually exploit. While her true involvement was much less proactive, the shifting of blame from established elitists like Louis XV to outsiders like Madame De Pompadour is a long-standing practice within elite upper-class culture. A study of eighteenth-century court behavior aids in illuminating the reasoning behind modern day cases of sexual exploitation within elite classes including that of Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking ring. These “self-fashioning” outsiders, Pompadour and Epstein, infiltrated high social ranks without elite backgrounds and disrupted the established authority within elite culture. By comparing eighteenth-century to twenty-first century elite culture, this literature review is an attempt to understand how attacking an outsider to upper class culture, instead of high-ranking members, has been historically used to maintain the social elite established order. A review of academic research provides some answers for how members avoid public scrutiny for sexually exploiting adolescent girls and how manipulating public attention has been a historically prevalent tool in diverting responsibility to the “self-fashioning” outsider. With future research, we can expose how “self-fashioning,” in the context of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, carried over into elite culture practices of the eighteenth century and is still prevalent in the twenty-first century. This future research can aid in shedding light on centuries of abuse and recycling of misinformation.