Childhood in early modern Scotland includes all aspects of the lives of children, from birth to adulthood, between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. This period corresponds to the early modern period in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the beginning of industrialisation and the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.
Birth was a predominately female event, although fathers were often present or nearby to assert their paternity. Before the Reformation, baptism was a means of creating wider spiritual kinship with godparents, but in the reformed Kirk it was used to strengthening relationships between the child and the parents, particularly the father. Among the elite of Highland society, there was a system of fosterage that created similar links to those of godparenthood. It was common, particularly among richer families, to employ a wet-nurse to care for the child. The primary responsibility for bringing up young children fell on the mother.
For many the early teens were marked by moving away from home to undertake life-cycle service. Boys might be apprenticed to a trade, or become agricultural servants. Girls might go into domestic or agricultural service. For those higher up in society and increasingly for those lower down, this might be after a period of schooling. For the wealthy and sometimes for the very talented, they might move on to one of Scotland's universities. The Humanist concern with widening education that had become significant in the Renaissance was shared by Protestant reformers. Boys might attend the grammar schools or ordinary parish schools. There were also large number of unregulated "adventure schools". By the late seventeenth century there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas. The widespread belief in the limited intellectual and moral capacity of women, vied with a desire, intensified after the Reformation, for women to take personal moral responsibility, particularly as wives and mothers. They were frequently taught reading, sewing and knitting, but not writing and much lower literacy rates.