4. Creating a worldview of childhood

The League of Nations made history on September 26, 1924, when it adopted a resolution declaring that children enjoyed certain rights. The Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child reflected a consensus among policymakers and reformers about what childhood meant. Despite its brevity, its idealism, and its lack of specifics—or perhaps because of them—the declaration encouraged a new worldview of children and childhood. “Creating a worldview of childhood” explains how its five clauses provide useful categories for assessing the status of childhood in the twentieth century and help to organize the many threads of reform and policymaking that appeared during the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries.

2. Revolutions

The succession of revolutions that followed the long medieval period in Europe profoundly affected childhood. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the political revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to an expansion of democratic governments and the concomitant development of public education and social welfare programs. They also led to efforts by Western nations to eliminate, to separate, and, eventually, to integrate (on Western terms) subjugated peoples—often by manipulating children and forcing deep changes in child-rearing practices. “Revolutions” considers common childhood experiences around the world; the impact of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment on childhood; and how indigenous and colonial customs impacted on each other.

5. The century of the child and beyond

The 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child, issued by the United Nations, provided a far more detailed and supposedly binding set of conditions and rights than the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which would define childhood globally. And yet the dying and injustice and exploitation continue. “The century of the child and beyond” considers the impact of war and conflict on children; the creation of global agencies and organizations designed to provide aid to and advocate for children; health, poverty, and quality of life; child labor and slavery; changes and challenges in education; modern forms of families; and the globalization of children’s culture.

3. The rise of “modern” childhoods

By the end of the nineteenth century Americans and western Europeans had arrived at a specific definition of a “modern” childhood, in which children could expect a number of things: that their childhood and youth would extend through adolescence, that their schooling would extend beyond a basic education, that many of their families’ social and economic resources would be devoted to their happiness and nurturing, and that they would increasingly be integrated into the developing consumer culture. “The rise of ‘modern’ childhoods” outlines the impact of the slave economy and colonization on childhood, working children and child exploitation during the industrial revolution, and how access to education became one of the hallmarks of a “modern” childhood.

1. Traditions

More is known about ancient childhoods in the West than elsewhere in the world, but from what is known, all cultures believed that childhood was more than a phase of biological immaturity, and all developed institutions, practices, and concepts designed to bring children up to continue their cultures. “Traditions” describes what is known about childhood in prehistory, outside the ancient West, in the ancient West, and in pre-contact America. It goes on to consider the visions of childhood in Christianity, Islam, and other religions, and childhood in the medieval world. The life of a child was shaped by the rise of settled societies and complex economies, systems of belief, and philosophical and practical innovations.

Introduction

Although the biological facts of being a child have remained largely the same, philosophers and theologians, reformers and policymakers, educators and scholars have, over the last few centuries, come to varying conclusions about the meaning of childhood and the place of children in society. Childhood is a social construction, shaped by local conditions, beliefs, and needs, as well as time. As a result, it is important that while children are a relatively unchanging fact of life, childhood is a constantly shifting concept. The Introduction explains that there are many histories of childhood, although a few general concepts and facts loosely bind them together.