Childhood as a Concept: Shifting, Fluctuating, Evolving

Instructor Introduction

The main goal of my first-year writing research project (and all good research projects, I would argue!) is to give students a chance to genuinely wonder about something, look into it, learn a bit, ask follow-up questions, and continue along the path of learning more. I think this kind of linear approach to building up knowledge goes hand-in-hand with the important recursive process of constantly revising what we already know as we add new information. Max’s research on the ever-evolving concept of childhood is exemplary in that regard. He started the project wondering how “our parenting styles inherently reflect how we want a child to grow and mature, and what values are most important to us,” largely with an interest in the ways that childhood is deteriorating in the present moment of digital influences on kids. But, from the first readings, he immediately catapulted backwards into historical texts, revising his sense of what he even meant by childhood, and excitedly taking up new directions and lines of inquiry.

But this is a writing prize, so I would be missing the point if I didn’t note that this kind of ongoing attention to genuine inquiry absolutely drips off the page of Max’s text. He consistently frames the introduction of new ideas in terms of how they relate to the questions at hand, but then moves on, not by coming up with some static meaning, but by talking through the new questions that his new insights bring to light. By the end of his research overview, Max has come to the complex conclusion that:

“Our idea of childhood is constantly evolving, because it is inherently linked to a society’s economic, political, and ideological circumstances. Because of the natural fluctuation of these spheres, childhood will constantly be in a state of development–our idea of children, as loveable, delicate beings in need of nurturing, is only a snapshot of a constantly evolving concept.”

To be overly-simplistic, what Max learned about conceptions of childhood is that they are complicated and deeply interesting, leaving us with much more learn. I cannot imagine a better outcome from a research project!

— Ryan McCarty

Childhood as a Concept: Shifting, Fluctuating, Evolving

How did our modern American idea of childhood come about? And what really is “childhood” anyway, if it is something created, not naturally formed? In contemporary American society, kids are generally seen as fragile, moldable beings, needing to be nurtured and guided. They are treated with a sense of permissiveness, especially in terms of the lack of legal consequences we enforce for anyone under eighteen. However, in earlier centuries, children were visualized often in contrast, seen as tiny adults, delayed in size but equipped (and fully prepared) with the tools for marriage, labor, and real life. So why the shift? The answer is certainly a social one, because humans have no clear genetic instruction on what childhood really is; our physical and mental development is not in direct alignment with our modern concept of childhood, an idea that has been developing only over the last 350 years of humanity’s existence (Postman, 2012). To avoid confusion, let us distinguish the separate ideas of childhood and youth: I will be discussing “childhood” as a subjective, socially constructed concept, something formulated and developed, separate from the objective, biological, natural development of human beings. Further, when I refer to childhood, I refer to our modern, current idea of it, not any conceptualization from an earlier period.

Nobody is magically made into a young adult at eighteen, nor are they necessarily adults at twenty-one; the existence of childhood is something that depends entirely on societal circumstances. In fact, some researchers have begun to argue that our contemporary concept of childhood is being lost, slowly eradicated by social media and technology (Postman, 2012), which has replaced the world of our grandparents and parents. This “lost world,” according to older generations, was one where kids could play outside, unsupervised, without any internet, and without any exposure to the adult secrets of sex, violence, and drugs, depictions of which are all readily available online (Strasburger, 2019. In other words, childhood is an impermanent construct, one whose form, and even existence as concept, changes according to the relevant societal, economic, and political circumstances of a community.

Some research, as noted by Micheal King in his work “The Child, Childhood and Children's rights within Sociology,” takes a deconstructionist view on childhood, concluding that there is a definite “nature of children” hidden beneath our artificial, societal constructions, which need only be dissolved to reveal the true, natural state of children and childhood. (King, 004). Like King, I consider this an unreasonable conclusion, given the fact that childhood is inherently tied to society–how could we understand an objective truth of something, if its form and behavior are constantly developing, in tandem with the flux of human civilization? Understanding this limitation, we are not looking for a concrete answer on what childhood is, or “the truth” of its nature, but rather, how it has developed, and how it behaves in the context of human civilization.

Across the articles and studies I came in contact with, each author was careful to avoid any concrete, singular conclusions on the origin of childhood; instead, each attributed the conceptual foundation of childhood to a variety of factors. The most commonly and significantly discussed factors included the development of technology, living standards, and accessibility to education over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries (Stearns 2003), as well as an emotional attachment to children (Hoffman et. al., 1978), one that gradually developed as children’s economic utility declined over the course of the 21st century (Postman, 2012).

It is easy to forget that childhood is not an innate part of humanity’s existence; our modern idea of it has slowly, gradually, been shaped over the course of several centuries, molded due to a variety of factors. Across these studies of childhood sociology, there is a general consensus that the value of children has shifted dramatically from earlier centuries to our modern age. In contemporary society, if anything, children are an economic burden. But up until the 19th century, it was not unusual for children to be another pair of helping hands, or even another source of income for the family by working (Kehily, 2004). This is not to say that children were not loved by their parents in earlier centuries, or were used solely for financial gain. Court documents from the medieval era capture many instances of deep parental grief at the death of children, as well as of sacrifices parents made for their kids, like running into burning-down houses (Owen, 2013). So love between parents and children has existed for a long time. However, the meanings of words like love and value have changed, and the ways we express them, too (Kehily, 2004). Our contemporary ways of showing children love, through kisses and hugs, words of affirmation, may have seemed strange to families from earlier centuries, but parents still certainly loved their kids. But why did children stop functioning as important facets of a family’s income, and start identifying as a group whose value is defined without any reference to monetarial gain?

The answer must consider a historical change in what it meant to be a fully functioning adult. The criteria that we have for adulthood, both mentally and physically, for fully developed humans, has shifted over time. In the 16th century, being an adult simply required the ability to speak, as all important transactions were conducted orally. With the average person fully exercising speech at around age 7, being an “adult” was therefore achieved at an extremely young age (Postman, 2012). This does not, necessarily, mean that all children were holding advanced positions at the age of seven; in her article “Did Medieval Parents Love Their Children?,” Molly Owen discusses peasant children, who, at the age of eight, were introduced to lighter versions of adult work: tending sheep, fetching water or picking fruit. Still, these children did have a level of responsibility that would be unconventional for today’s standards. When the printing press was invented and commercialized, literacy was made an accessible skill to all— adults were then expected to be able to speak and to read, which, unlike learning to talk, requires study and concentration, an educational setting. It requires years of teaching and guidance. Thus, children then had to a)learn to speak and b)go to school to learn to read and write, necessitating the creation of an intermittent period, a “training time” between adulthood and immaturity (Postman, 2012). Thus, the earliest beginnings of childhood were formed, as a developmental period between birth and adulthood.

The development of technology and living standards have also defined our contemporary understanding of adulthood. Over the course of the 21st century, the United States saw massive gains in technology, medicine, and in education, especially with WW2’s massive economic profit. Many of the old worries about raising children, like the impact of childhood-diseases, were solved with advanced technology, like vaccines. Children were less likely to die, or to be orphaned, as living standards increased, and improvements in technology and education created new occupational fields and opportunities for aspiring children (Stearns 2003). If families expected their children to survive to childhood, they were more likely to invest in them, both emotionally and financially, than they had in the past. Additionally, during this period, the passing of the Fundamental Law of Education (1947), the School Education law (1947), and the Boards of Education Law (1948) redesigned education in the United States, increasing the length of schooling programs, dividing it into several periods: elementary, lower secondary, upper secondary, and university. Further, schools became increasingly accessible to children as an entire class, regardless of disability, both physical and mental, with the implementation of special education programs (Britannica). With these societal improvements, children across the United States could be educated, and could find good, decently-paying jobs even as the workforce grew increasingly specialized and complex, with most jobs, even the lowest-paying, requiring reading and writing skills.

We should also attempt to understand the contemporary relationship between family and childhood, the concept of a familial unit, based on love and affection. Kehily pays particular attention to child/family connection, with an examination of Europe’s middle class in the eighteenth century. As the middle class gained political power, they used the concept of family to distinguish themselves from the aristocracy and working classes, increasingly by stressing family as something separate from the outside world, and boys and girls as being a)different from men and women and b)dependent on their parents. Although the concepts of childhood and the modern family unit were initially formulated as tools to distinguish the middle class, in societal discourse, the family unit was universally applicable, discussed as “the family,” rather than “the middle class family,” giving rise to the idea of the family as a unit, and the child as possessing a unique role within it. (Kehily, 2004).

In his book Anxious Parents, Peter Stearns describes children as “emotionally priceless,” on account of their lacking economic capabilities. In terms of general, observable society, when we refer to our kids, we use a variety of affectionate yet symbolic names: my love, my sweet, sweetiepie, etc., titles that stress a relationship based on love, not on utility or status. When people talk about wanting to have kids, the answer almost always includes something about the happiness, the love produced in having children. In a study published in (Hoffman et. al., 1978), parents and non parents chose their primary motivations for having had/wanting to have children from a list; both groups were motivated by economic utility at miniscule rates—9.05% of non-parents and 7.5% of parents chose it, whereas having children for “group ties and affection” was chosen by 63% of parents and 57.95% of non parents. “Simulation and fun” was chosen by 57.7% of parents, and 37.3% of nonparents. In general, we don’t make much money off of our children—obviously, it takes a lot of money and time to send a kid to school, and to provide them with all of their necessities. So in terms of utility, children primarily serve to offer love and warmth to our lives–they are our “pumpkins”, “cuties”, and “sweethearts,” etc., not our coworkers or our mental and physical equals. Instead, they occupy the separate sphere of childhood.

However, we should again call attention to research on childhood’s negative development in modern America. According to (Strasburger, 2019), a study at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s hospital 2700 person poll, found that, “nearly two-thirds feel that today’s children have less quality family time and are more stressed, more than half of the parents feel that kids’ mental and emotional health are worse, and 42% feel that children have poorer physical health and weaker friendships.” According to Neil Postman, child innocence is impossible to sustain in a world of TV. Because of this, he argues, children are being depicted as adults on soap operas and sitcoms, resembling the language, dress, interests, and even sexuality of adults. In this way, childhood is being erased from modern media. On the other side of this, there is actually some evidence that Gen Z is reaching traditional markers of adulthood, like finishing school and leaving home, as well as dating, driving, having sex, etc., at much later periods than earlier generations (Bishop, 2022). With such vastly different conclusions being made, it's likely that there is some truth to both of them—meaning that technology’s effects on childhood are still too new to be understood, and may not be as simple as wiping the concept of childhood off the map.

With all of this in mind, we can formulate a general outline of childhood’s modern conceptual development: as children lost their economic utility in an increasingly advanced world, they fulfilled a new “responsibility” or role in the family, and in society. With no real- world competence to offer, society began to view kids as offering immaterial wealth, joy and love, and strength to familial bonds (Hoffman et. al., 1978), rather than another stream of income, as they had in earlier centuries (Stearns 2003). Additionally, as the world developed around children, in terms of technology and literacy, the criterion for navigating it grew. Thus, years of schooling and education, as well as longer periods of physical and mental development, became the solutions for preparing children for an increasingly complex version of adulthood. These changes were so recently made that even 45 years ago, a French delegate introduced the idea to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that children were not prepared to exercise the full of their own rights, that they held a special status, one separate from adults (King, 2004). However, research is now beginning to move away from this concept of childhood, as child sociologists trace the role of the internet and the digital world in American society.

Our idea of childhood is constantly evolving, because it is inherently linked to a society’s economic, political, and ideological circumstances. Because of the natural fluctuation of these spheres, childhood will constantly be in a state of development–our idea of children, as loveable, delicate beings in need of nurturing, is only a snapshot of a constantly evolving concept; it seems that we may even be moving away from this visualization of childhood and children, to a reality where children grow up rapidly thanks to the digital world.

Annotated Bibliography

Bishop, Katie. “Kids getting older younger: Are children growing up too fast?” The BBC, 2022.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220324-kgoy-kids-getting-older-younger.

This article will serve to add a contrastive view on the argument that our modern conception of childhood is disappearing. The piece introduces the KGOY acronym, which stands for “Kids Getting Older Younger,” which originates from marketing strategies employed by major brands. Supposedly, due to exposure to the “real world” through technology, kids literally started getting older at younger ages. From this, companies began to operate with the idea that children had greater brand awareness than earlier years, meaning that advertisements no longer needed to market products only towards adults. According to the article, this theory has been around since the 1990s, and has been a way for experts to identify the demise of childhood, as kids increasingly gain the status of adults in certain contexts, specifically in the setting of consumption. Researchers also point to an increased presence of adult programs on TV and body-image issues in young girls, created at the hands of the beauty standards promoted on the internet, as being major factors in the decline of childhood.

However, the article then moves in a completely different direction, discussing studies making the opposite conclusion: that childhood is actually being expanded temporally, not dissolved. The data cited in this text paints a completely opposite depiction of contemporary childhood than Straburger and Postman, who envision childhood as dying, decaying, rather than expanding. Supposedly, Gen Z is reaching societal markers of childhood, like finishing school, moving out of the house, drinking alcohol, etc. at much older ages than previous generations. I would like to note that these “markers of childhood” have no actual say in what constitutes being a child and being adult, just as a child is not suddenly sprung into adulthood upon drinking or having sex, nor does the completion of these actions constitute an adult. However, the article adds important nuance to this discussion, importantly suggesting counter-information to the overwhelming argument that technology is redefining our understanding of childhood.

Hoffman W. L., Thornton A., & Manis D. J. “The Value of Children to Parents in the United States.” Journal of Population, vol.1, No.2, 1978, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27507564?seq=1.

This article presents survey-based research on the appeal of children for both American adults without children, and for parents. The data, represented in various tables, divides the responses of interviewed adults on their strongest motives for having children; interviewees chose several of their strongest motives, and the article itself discusses why these responses are given, diving into an incredibly in-depth analysis of each answer, the most common being for love and companionship, to form a complete family, for stimulation and fun, to benefit the husband/wife relationship, and for the expansion of the self. The responses suggest a chiefly emotional, intangible benefit of having children, rather than an economic or social one. Most importantly, the article analyzes the role of familial psychology in the treatment of children, the way that familial hierarchies, the roles often designated to the mother, father, and children of the house, impact the draw of having children (and how they impact the operation of a household once born). For example, mothers, traditionally expected to stay at home as a childcarer, associate having children as actually furthering their own self importance far more than fathers do, likely because of the father’s traditionally exterior obligations in the workplace (suggesting that the appeal of children varies according to familial structure).The study’s participants communicated a deep emotional appeal in children, rather than an economic one, or one connected to status. The largest group that valued children for their “economic utility” was non- parent males at 10%, suggesting that the value in children is mostly emotional.

Concerning potential limitations to my research, I am looking at a generalized view of childhood, though one can certainly argue that a child’s role will differ largely by class and culture, my goal is to look at the development of the “idea” or “outline” of childhood, only in its most general terms. In other words, the article’s detailed research concerning families of varying ethnicities and educational backgrounds is beyond the scope of my research, though I do acknowledge its significance in seeking detailed contrasts between communities in parenting and childhood. Furthermore, the article was published in 1978, meaning it will not be an entirely accurate reflection of the modern value of children, even though much of the social phenomena discussed is reflective of patterns in modern society. However, this has the potential to be beneficial, as the differences between the modern and past eras, when contrasted, offer a much broader perspective, one that tracks the changes in the value of children over a large period of time.

Kehily, J. Mary. An Introduction to Childhood Studies. New York City: Open University Press, 2004.

This article discusses a wide range of factors in the development of childhood, ones that I have touched on in other pieces (and thus require no further discussion), but it does touch on a minute shift in the creation of childhood, specifically suggesting that only middle-class boys were initially seen as being separate than their adult counterparts (rather than the idea that childhood developed for all children at the same time, across gender and class). Boys were the first to be sent off to school to read and write, to learn the skills of adulthood. This change first developed in England’s middle class, who, looking to distinguish themselves from the upper and lower classes, attached themselves to the idea of family, and the concept that boys and girls differed from adults (and thus played a different role in the family structure than their parents).

The article also notes that up until the 19th century, children were valued chiefly for their economic capabilities. Families often had large amounts of children, partially because of high death rates in children and in part because having more babies was identical to having future laborers, extra hands to further the economic gain of the family. However, as jobs became increasingly specialized (and necessitated greater skills and education) children lost what was essentially their role in the family: capable, mature contributors to the survival of the greater familial unit. Thus, a new role was assigned to children, a new meaning, in which children were “emotionally priceless,” rather than valued because of their ability to do work and produce an income.

King, Michael. “The Child, Childhood, and Children’s rights within Sociology” King’s Law Journal, vol. 15, issue 2, 2004. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09615768.2004.11427574.

In terms of my own writing, I was able to start grouping together my sources, and their themes, based on Michael King’s lengthy discussion of modern sociologists' general conclusions in their studies of childhood. The work done by these experts tends to envision childhood as being dependent on society; in other words, the environment of a society plays a large role in the structure and behavior of the concept of childhood. Though King endorses this research, he does not endorse the conclusions some researchers have made based on this: the idea that beneath our societal envisioning of childhood, there is a natural, pure form of it, too. This source will therefore join my others, in terms of their sociological (not biological) approach to the study of childhood, as this particular article emphasizes childhood as being a product of civilization, innately tied to society.

Because the piece is primarily a discussion of child’s rights, King does a lot of research work concerning the positioning of children within society—are they adults, or are they of a separate class? King describes a general trend, one in which the rights of children in the modern era have become increasingly restricted, though in recent years, movements and discussions in favor of child rights have grown. Naturally, these conversations concern the capability of children, and the question of whether or not kids are mentally able to exercise their full rights. The article then presents several arguments on the topic from both sides, the dates of which are most important; they demonstrate that the status of the child within society has been anything but stagnant, but rather a position that has been under scrutiny and refinement for hundreds of years. Again, this works to prove my definition of childhood as being a social product, dependent on the current state of a society in form and behavior.

Owen, Molly. “Did Medieval Parents Love Their Children?” Hearts Through History, 2013. https://www.heartsthroughhistory.com/2013/01/02/did-medieval-parents-love-their- children.

This short article is narrowly yet significantly useful, as it discusses the common misconception that parental love for children is a new, contemporary phenomenon. According to the piece, historians often cast earlier centuries in an unfairly negative light, one that deals its focus almost entirely on images of cramped, hazardous working conditions for children during the industrial revolution, particularly in factories and along assembly lines. The focus of this piece considers a much wider breadth of history, looking back as far into the middle ages to challenge the idea that kids were not loved by their parents, and were simply extra hands, in the eyes of past generations. In its discussion of court documents, anecdotes, and several historical (and artistic) sources, this piece does an effective job of addressing this misconception, an effective step for my own work, too.

Postman, Neil. “The Disappearance of Childhood” Childhood Education, vol. 61, issue 4, 1998, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00094056.1985.10520201.

Because this article’s chief thesis revolves around the idea that “childhood” as a concept is being lost in the digital age, I am forced to pull relevant pieces of information from intermittent parts of the article, which are chiefly used to introduce the article’s main focus (one that differs from my own). Regardless, the article’s discussion of the conceptual creation of childhood is one that offers a detailed, historical account of the positioning of children within society.

The article provides a comprehensive overview of the creation of childhood, one that extends beyond recent centuries. The creation of childhood, according to the article, is one that actually originates in the distant 16th century. The article suggests that the creation of childhood was a gradual shift, one that has been continuously refined and changed over the last 350 years, and is still being developed today; in other words, the concept of childhood is a very abstract one, subject to change. Concerning the historical information offered, the article describes the pre-childhood period as being one in which 7 year olds were seen as full grown adults. Other than being physically smaller than fully grown humans, children were seen as the fully-grown individuals: their legal rights, their styles of dress, and even their depictions in art were the same as adults (note the mature faces of children in 13th and 14th century paintings). There were no books on parenting, on the act of raising and nurturing a child–suggesting a general lack of value was placed on the attention and care given to children in pre-17th century England. Though this history concerns the English development of childhood, it is a history that is relevant to my own research, in that our modern American concepts of childhood are rooted in the early English ideas discussed in this study.

The article also makes an interesting point concerning what it meant to be a fully functioning adult in the 16th century vs. in our modern era. The author finds that there is a clear distinction between the two; though today, we expect adults to be emotionally, physically, and mentally mature, being a full grown adult in earlier centuries only constituted the ability to speak (a concept we can hardly imagine in contemporary society). Because most people could not read, and jobs were not specialized (in a manner that required a college education), all important transactions and occupations normally only required the ability to speak, something that develops, biologically, around the age of 7. This, the author notes, was the biggest drive in treating children as adults, until the printing press introduced the act of reading to the general public; suddenly, the vast majority of the population had access to reading material (and were thus expected to read in adulthood). Thus, being an adult necessitated a new set of criteria: one had to speak and read, a skill that requires schooling and education (and a level of attention and nurturing never offered before to children).

Stearns, M. Peter. Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America. New York and London: New York University Press, 2003. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8nkTCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=role+of+children+in+modern+society&ots=PnGlDk60JR&sig=TjQqpMJVIahQZ7tYwwd4 Q4i7K9I#v=onepage&q=role%20of%20children%20in%20modern%20society&f=false

Although this article focuses primarily on the history of parental strategies, specifically, the most important facets of a healthy child/parent relationship, its information can be seamlessly applied to the question of infant value and societal placement. Most important for my purposes, the text tracks a major shift in ideology over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, as it became clear that children were not simply tiny adults and important facets of the family’s income as laborers, but feeble beings needing to be nurtured and guided, shaped into adults later in life. The article discusses the growth of a “parental anxiety” over the course of the 20th century as being contributive to this shift in ideology, an anxiety that can be further linked to changes to the survival rate of children, the development and access to high-quality education, the introduction of new technology and child-affecting diseases, as well as major political events, created a perfect storm that completely altered the role of children over the course of the 1940s and 50s. As a result, children became increasingly treated with a sense of permissiveness and as fragile, breakable beings, requiring (in the eyes of parents) greater attention and involved child- rearing.

Because of the development of technology, science, and the American economy over the course of the 20th century in tandem with a general improvement in the quality of life (and thus the survival rates of children), American families had the money and the time to attend to children in a way they could not before. Further, education radically became more accessible, and attention was given to children in a new manner; one in which they were treated as beings that needed time to learn and develop.

Strasburger, Victor. The Death of Childhood. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-5275-3084-3- sample.pdf

This article discusses the argument that childhood is, in fact, “dying,” and slowly being replaced with a morphed, emulative form of adulthood. The research attributes this change primarily to the growth of technology, the media’s character, and the lack of censorship on the internet. Like the revolutionary power of the printing press, technology has the power to totally

re-envision, or eradicate, childhood. The article offers a casual, though overall helpful, contrast between the modern world and the youth of our parents and grandparents. This old world is described as an “idyllic” place, one where kids had a sense of freedom, innocence, and the ability to play outside, with no thought of the secrets of the adult world (sex, drugs, violence, etc.) Although the article seems to take an immediately biased approach to this research, in dramatically titling the work “The Death of Childhood,” its discussion intentionally moves away from the classic old-people-hating on-the-youth trope, establishing that its research is not aimed to criticize children’s use of technology, but rather the technology itself. Strasburger does not attack all forms of media, but only its trends, like a movement towards increasingly graphic, explicit scenes and images on television. He also suggests that this death of childhood can be linked with a decay in the traditional family structure, but his evidence is relatively sparse. The article develops a considerably grim visualization of the current state of childhood, offering accounts of child-bullying, suicide, etc. Strasburgers also makes a series of passionate, urgent claims for dramatic shifts in technology—more child friendly policies, greater parent involvement in the filtering of media content, amongst others. The tone of urgency used throughout, an almost desperate one, highlights the impermanence of childhood: its fragility, the ease with which it can be altered or even destroyed. According to this piece, our idea of childhood may be lost altogether without immediate intervention and radical change.

“Education in the 20th century: social and historical background.” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Education-in-the-20th-century

This article will provide me with important information pertaining to societal developments following world war two, the transformations occuring in the United States that had profound impacts on the status and positioning of children. Specifically, this piece tracks the legislative movements leading up to our modern school system, its division into separate facets (elementary, middle school, high school, etc.), its growing accessibility for disabled and underprivileged communities, and its general expansion of curriculum and offered areas of study. With these developments, a much wider, vaster population of children had the means to grow into healthy, full functioning adults, as contributing members of society. This article will be effective in my own research, because of its modern focus on American civilization. Its information on the state of the world before these developments, before schools evolved in terms of accessibility, affordability, and curriculum, will act as one pole of reference in understanding childhood’s most recent and significant conceptual changes.

The article also discusses other important changes to the development of childhood, though these details are too minute, too specific to be effective in my pursuit of understanding childhood broadly as a concept, but they are important to make note of, and should be considered in more detailed, expansive research. They include an increasing emphasis on the study of science and technology during the Cold War period, as well as the popularity of important intellectual movements, led by scholars like William James, a significant figure in the proliferation of psychology. In his famous 1890 work, “The Principles of Psychology,” James

wrote that the focus of education was to “organize the child’s powers of conduct so as to fit him to his social and physical environment.” Sigmund Freud would later expand and develop these ideas, introducing the idea of the unconscious self, and new ways of thinking about child/parent relationships.