In the past children could go out alone, play in the street and meet up with friends and classmates. Today their range of motion is much more limited, but they live experiences unknown to children of yesterday. Their births are strongly desired, usually they have mothers who work outside the home, but who are still responsible for their care, a father who is more accessible and inclined towards tenderness, fewer siblings to be jealous of and a precocious familiarity with their peers in the preschool. Children today are more dependent upon adults and the work of parents has become more complex. All of this, including the extraordinary capacity of children to perceive and understand that the science of childhood development has discovered in the last thirty years, forms the basis of this book.

Luigia Camaioni teaches developmental psychology at La Sapienza University in Rome.