This book is a journey into the childhood of five boys and girls from different regions of Ukraine at the end of the 19th century. It reveals a world of rituals, words and things that once seemed commonplace in Hutsulshchyna and Bukovyna, Polissya, Podillia and Naddnipryanshchyna. The story begins with the cutting of the umbilical cord by a midwife and ends with several boisterous Ukrainian weddings. The authors combine artistic narrative with ethnographic material and show how traditions were shaped by place, faith, language, and family structure, how diverse they were, and how urbanisation influenced the transformation of social roles. Matters of Childhood is not nostalgia for the past, but an attempt to understand it. After reading it, you will see how your great-grandparents lived and perhaps recognise something of yourself in them.