First published by George Routledge & Sons Ltd. in 1969 and 1973.

This is a two-volume study of the social concern for children in Britain, ranging from the Tudor paternalism of the mid-sixteenth century to the legislation of the Welfare State in the mid-twentieth century.

Volume I analyses various aspects of Tudor policy concerning children and discusses the ways in which later generations deliberately or unconsciously modified these policies. The authors show how, as a result of changed social attitudes, the failure to provide adequately for the welfare of children was again by the end of the eighteenth century becoming a matter of increasing concern among thinking people and prompted a renewal of local and voluntary efforts to solve what had become urgent national problems.

Volume II covers the period from the last years of the eighteenth century up to the first half of the twentieth, a time in which problems caused by urbanization, industrialization, the rapid increase in population, and failure to provide adequately for the welfare of children led to a new awakening of national conscience. The volume demonstrates how deep concern for the abuses suffered by industrially exploited, deprived, neglected and delinquent children brought about the demand for new legislation and some measure of community support. The gradual recognition that failure to make adequate social provision for all the nation's young was both economically wasteful and morally wrong is shown to have led to more comprehensive policies for community responsibility in the twentieth century.