In this book, Paula Fass looks at parenting and childhood against the social, political and cultural changes of each era from the late 18th century in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, to the modern era of "helicopter" parents. She also discusses the advent of the science of child development and that of birth control, and the revolution in education. I found some of the eras more interesting than others, particularly the effects on families in the aftermath of both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War most interesting. In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, when, as it happened, fathers were more involved in their children's lives, children were encouraged to be more independent and were considered more equal to their parents than European children of time were. In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was a move by some to assist children of African Americans who had been separated from their parents in slavery to be reunited with them, and much attention went to the many war orphans in cities and children exploited in factory work.

Some may find the modern era to be far more interesting - Dr Spock, Erik Erickson, immigration, the image of the "bad mother,"the expansion of the middle class in the 50s and the freedoms that came with it, American faith in education and the creation of the high school, and the anxiety of parenting today - to name a few of the topics touched upon. Fass covers a lot of territory in this relatively short book (under 300 pages), any part of which could fill volumes on its own. It's a concise, readable and intriguing journey through roughly 230 years of parenting and childhood history. ( )

The peculiarities of American childhood among Western nations, Fass argues, have long been in place, since authoritarian control over children gave way very early to increased freedom even before the American Revolution. “Europeans often described American children as rude, unmannerly, and bold. Americans were eager also to see themselves as different—fresher, newer, younger.” Wide availability of land, the ability to move away from constraining relations, and lack of specific laws governing inheritance lowered parents’ ability to control their children, even in the early generations of the United States when children went to work early in life because of persistent labor shortages. Work, in fact, provided young people with “a sense of the importance of their contribution and of their ability to create their own place in the world.” “Nowhere,” a nineteenth­century French commentator said, “are children so free, so bold, such enfants terrible, as in America.” (Compare Lincoln’s unwillingness to discipline his children.) So complaints about our manners are old hat.

Fass also spends time on the dangers of the nineteenth century: “By the time they were sixteen, one-third of all slave children had been separated from their parents by sale or transfer, and this was likely an underestimation because it is based on the experiences of former slaves interviewed in the 1930s who were still young at the end of the war.” Nor was this experience of loss absent outside of slavery: “Before they turned twenty, almost half of American children in the decades from 1860 to 1880 had lost one parent.”

Industrialization and the end of slavery, Fass argues, crystallized a perceived crisis in children’s lives, leading to a public focus on protection for children and the use of public institutions “when parents seemed inadequate to the task.” While poorer and immigrant families required children’s labor to survive, “[t]he new standards of the family were class standards as the reformers incorporated class ideals into the very notion of family decency.” By the late nineteenth century, children faced new restrictions, and fostering desirable independence and good habits then became a problem to be solved by science and professionals.

By the 1930s, mothers (and immigrants), in particular, were supposed to look outside the home to learn childrearing principles. These principles were supposed to produce the independent child valued by American culture, but this was a challenge because improved health care and lower birth rates allowed American mothers to focus more resources and attention on each child, creating the perceived risk of coddling.

Astonishingly, from 1890 to 1930, the U.S. built an average of one high school per day, and high school enrollment rose from 18 to 73 percent from 1910 to 1940; these numbers were unequaled by any other country for a long time. As a high school education became more important, the resulting extended period of non-work and non-home immersion with peers shaped adolescence in uniquely American ways. High school meant a new kind of independence from parents while children were still economically dependent. Also, professionalization across occupations meant that there were fewer ways for children to make their own paths; they increasingly had to adjust to the larger society in order to succeed, but that didn’t require obedience to parents any more. Instead, especially among immigrant children, peers and teachers taught the American ethos. Kurt Vonnegut said in 1970: “High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.” (Fass doesn’t talk much about what high school was like—or, often, not like—for African-Americans, especially in the South.)

This extended period of non-working life, Fass suggests, eventually lay the groundwork for the student protests of the 1960s as well as sexual experimentation. She points out: “Had [college students] been raised at an earlier time, most would have been considered adults.” In a nod to my latest fandom, she notes that Todd Gitlin, one of the New Left’s leaders, was the same age as Alexander Hamilton when he became Washington’s right hand man.

Getting to today, Fass contends that what’s different is that childbearing is no longer seen as part of the natural order, and instead is treated as a choice (that no one else, including society at large, is under any duty to support). Compared to European parents who emphasize regularity and family time, American parents are more likely to emphasize individual attention and active interaction to develop a child’s independence—which leaves them (us) exhausted! Terrified that the slightest error will mean that their children will fall out of the middle/upper class, wealthier parents seek as much control as possible. The result is that children are encouraged to make choices without real responsibility: “over­controlled and over­indulged at the same time, while mothers are run ragged.” The fact that schooling has to last so long delays the perks of adulthood; high schools aren’t adequate stopping points for middle-class aspirations, and they also don’t provide enough vocational preparation. So high school isn’t the transition into adulthood any more, and no one really knows what is.

Kids in immigrant families face their own special challenges, when parents’ “lack of facility with the English language, unfamiliarity with the culture and with how American institutions operate provide one child with the opportunity to become mature, dependable, and knowledgeable long before similarly aged or placed American children are.” Such kids can feel unprepared for the adult matters they’re exposed to, and overworked, but they also get to be resourceful and upset the usual hierarchies in their families. While high schools were previously a force for assimilation, in the last third of the twentieth century they resegregated with a vengeance, so “[t]hose students who moved most strongly away from their parents’ culture moved toward peer cultures and values that were not middle class and devalued schooling.” ( )