' AH istmy of Amertcan (hildhood Huck's Raft The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Title page illustration: Photograph of Charles Lindbergh at about age ten, rafting on the Mississippi River near Little Falls, Minnesota, around 1912. Courtesy of the Lindbergh Picture Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mintz, Steven, 1953- Huck's raft: a history of American childhood I Steven Mintz. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-01508-8 (alk. paper) 1. Childhood-United States-History. 2. Child rearing-United States-History. 3. Children-United States-Social conditions. 4. United States-Social life and customs. I. Title. HQ792.U5M57 2004 305.23' 0973-dc22 2004042220 Designed by Gwen Nefsky Frankfeldt Contents Preface vii Prologue 1 1 Children of the Covenant 7 2 Red, White, and Black in Colonial America 32 3 Sons and Daughters of Liberty 53 4 Inventing the Middle-Class Child 75 5 Growing Up in Bondage 94 6 Childhood Battles of the Civil War 118 7 Laboring Children 133 8 Save the Child 154 9 Children under the Magnifying Glass 185 10 New to the Promised Land 200 11 Revolt of Modern Youth 213 12 Coming of Age in the Great Depression 233 13 Mobilizing Children for World War II 254 14 In Pursuit of the Perfect Childhood 275 15 Youthquake 310 16 Parental Panics and the Reshaping of Childhood 335 17 The Unfinished Century of the Child 372 Notes 387 Index 437 BLANK PAGE Preface FoR MORE THAN three centuries Americans have believed that the younger generation is less respectful and knowledgeable, and more alienated, sexually promiscuous, and violent, than previously. Today adults fear that children are growing up too fast and losing their sense of innocent wonder too early. Prematurely exposed to the pressures, stresses, and responsibilities of adult life, the young mimic adult sophistication, dress inappropriately, and experiment with alcohol, drugs, sex, and to bacco before they are emotionally and psychologically ready. One of the goals of this book is to strip away the myths, misconcep tions, and nostalgia that contribute to this pessimism about the young. There has never been a time when the overwhelming majority of Ameri can children were well cared for and their experiences idyllic. Nor has childhood ever been an age of innocence, at least not for most children. Childhood has never been insulated from the pressures and demands of the surrounding society, and each generation of children has had to wres tle with the social, political, and economic constraints of its own histori cal period. In our own time, the young have had to struggle with high rates of family instability, a deepening disconnection from adults, and the expectation that all children should pursue the same academic path at the same pace, even as the attainment of full adulthood recedes ever further into the future. The history of children is often treated as a marginal subject, and there is no question that it is especially difficult to write. Children are rarely ob vious historical actors. They leave fewer historical sources than adults, viii Preface and their powerlessness makes them less visible than other social groups. Nevertheless, the history of childhood is inextricably bound up with the broader political and social events in the life of the nation-including col onization, revolution, slavery, industrialization, urbanization, immigra tion, and war-and children's experience embodies many of the key themes in American history, such as the rise of modern bureaucratic insti tutions, the growth of a consumer economy, and the elaboration of a wel fare state. Certain themes and patterns of American childhood will emerge in this book. The first is that childhood is not an unchanging biological stage of life but is, rather, a social and cultural construct that has changed radi cally over time. Every aspect of childhood-including children's house hold responsibilities, play, schooling, relationships with parents and peers, and paths to adulthood-has been transformed over the past four centu ries. Just two hundred years ago there was far less age segregation than there is today and much less concern with organizing experience by chro nological age. There was also far less sentimentalizing of children as spe cial beings who were more innocent and vulnerable than adults. This does not mean that adults failed to recognize childhood as a stage of life, with its own special needs and characteristics. Nor does it imply that parents were unconcerned about their children and failed to love them and mourn their deaths. Both the definition and experience of childhood have varied according to changing cultural, demographic, economic, and historical circumstances. Nor is childhood an uncontested concept. The late twentieth-century culture war-pitting advocates of a "protected" childhood, seeking to shield children from adult realities, against proponents of a "prepared" childhood-is only the most recent in a long series of conflicts over the definition of a proper childhood. These range from a seventeenth-century conflict between Anglican traditionalist, humanistic, and Puritan concep tions of childhood; to heated eighteenth-century debates over infant de pravity and patriarchal authority; and turn-of-the-twentieth-century struggles between the notion of a useful childhood, which expected chil dren to act in a way that repaid their parents' sacrifices, and the ideal of a sheltered childhood, free from labor and devoted to play and education. Another major theme is the diversity of childhood. Childhood, the pe riod from infancy to eighteen, includes girls and boys at very different stages of development. It encompasses a wide variety of classes, ethnic groups, regions, religions, and time periods. During the early seventeenth century demographic, economic, ideological, and religious factors com- Preface ix bined to make geographical subcultures the most significant markers of childhood diversity. By the mid-nineteenth century, shifts in cultural and religious values and a highly uneven process of economic development made social class, gender, and race more salient sources of childhood di versity. In recent years social conservatives have tended to fixate on differ ences in family structure, while political liberals have tended to focus on ethnic, gender, and racial differences. In fact social class is the most sig nificant determinant of children's well-being. While race, gender, and eth nicity exert a powerful influence on children's lives, socioeconomic status is intimately linked to their health care, schooling, and family stability. This book also traces the shifting power relationships between parents and children, especially parents' increasing psychological investment in their children. The Puritans believed that parents were responsible for their children's spiritual upbringing; contemporary parents hold them selves responsible not only for children's physical well-being but also for their psychological adjustment, personal happiness, and future success. As birthrates fell and increasing numbers of mothers entered the paid workforce, parental anxiety intensified; fears for children's safety esca lated, as did concern that they not suffer from boredom or low self esteem. Above all, middle-class parents worried that their children would be unable to replicate their status position. Then there is the pattern of recurrent moral panics over children's well being. Ever since the Pilgrims departed for Plymouth in 1620, fearful that "their posterity would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted" in the Old World, Americans have experienced repeated panics over the younger generation.1 Sometimes these panics were indeed about children, such as the worries over polio in the early 1950s. More often, however, children stand in for some other issue, and the panics are more metaphori cal than representational, such as the panic over teenage pregnancy, youth violence, and declining academic achievement in the late 1970s and 1980s, which reflected pervasive fears about family breakdown, crime, drugs, and America's declining competitiveness in the world. Far from regarding children simply as passive creatures, who are the objects of socialization and schooling, and consumers of entertainment and products produced by grownups, this book views children as active agents in the evolution of their society. The following pages will demon strate that children have participated actively in the major events in Amer ican history, that child-adult relations have involved a process of contes tation and negotiation, and that children have been creators as well as consumers of culture. The balance between childhood dependence and in-