Philippe Ariès's book, Centuries of Childhood, has been hailed for over a decade as a leading work on family history. Ari6s compared traditional and modern families and argued that mignotage (coddling) and the teaching of reason during childhood developed only during the modern period. Despite its popularity, the book is severely flawed. First, Ariès uses printed and pictorial art forms as evidence for the sentiments of the period. Second, he does not develop his explanations. Though he remarks about the absence of modern sentiment in traditional families, he does not articulate what the traditional sentiment was. Third, Childhood displays an ambiguous chronology which places the same historical point (the seventeenth century) at different temporal positions (early, middle, and late) within the narrative. Finally, Ari6s consciously writes from a present-minded standpoint which limits his own understanding of the material.