Describe the history of child development.

There have been differing views of children throughout history. Early views considered children to be evil and in need of harsh and persistent discipline. Other views looked upon children as miniature adults who simply needed to grow. Advocates of this view, of course, would support putting children to work as soon as they were "big enough" to do the work. Others looked at childhood as a time of goodness or even "blankness," making the child ready to experience the world and become whatever the environment destined the child to become. John Locke, for example, believed that children were born a "tabula rasa" or clean slate. They were not born with inborn predispositions.
This meant they were born ready to become anything. If the environment and their caregiving were positive, they would become positive adults and do important things. If the environment and their caregiving were negative, they were destined to wither and be less productive adults. This idea, of course, can be seen in statements of behavioral psychologists such as John Watson.