Children's History Explored In New Book

4/29/97

Philadelphia , Pa. -- Though long ignored, children have an undeniable and telling history of their own, argues a Penn State professor in a new book.

In "Growing Pains: Children in the Industrial Age, 1850-1890," Priscilla Ferguson Clement, associate professor of history at Penn State's Delaware County Campus in suburban Philadelphia, reveals that children are and have throughout history been actors in their own right. The book, published by Simon & Schuster MacMillan's Twayne Publishers, is the first of its kind published on children from this era -- a time in American history when children made up half the U.S. population.

Though today's children share a common culture of MTV, Sesame Street and popular toys, their worlds are also remarkably different. "Growing Pains" sheds light on the magnitude of these differences, revealing how critical historical events, such as the Civil War and industrialization, dramatically altered children's lives and set the stage for many of the disparities they face today.

"While many of us think of the Civil War as the major defining event of the 19th century, it probably had less impact on children than the economic changes that came with industrialization," Clement says. "African-American children were freed by the war and many youngsters lost a parent in the war, but it had little permanent effect on most boys and girls living in the North."

Industrialization was a far more powerful divisive force. It hardened class lines, further dividing Black and White children, boys and girls, working-class children and middle-class children, children living on farms and those growing up in the city.

"In the late 19th Century, there was not one childhood, but several," Clement explains. Middle-class youth were the only ones lucky enough to enjoy an extended childhood overseen full-time by their mothers and servants. Only well-off boys and girls played with store-bought toys, read "Huckleberry Finn" or "Little Women," and played the "new sports" of baseball and tennis. Similarly, they avoided employment until their late teens or twenties, attended high school and sometimes college.

Virtually all other boys and girls had much shorter childhoods abbreviated by the need to work full-time by their early teens. Working-class children rarely went beyond grammar school and played with simple, homemade toys. Poor White youngsters read exciting adventure stories in dime novels about working girls and boys like themselves, while African-American children participated in a spoken culture full of stories about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox.

Yet Clement notes, "Between 1850 and 1890, children of all races and classes shared some things in common, though not necessarily the same things that today's children share."

About 100 years ago, virtually all children played unsupervised by their parents much of the time. Boys and girls living in rural or suburban areas wandered far from home to dam streams, fish and trap animals. Urban girls danced in city streets to the music of local organ grinders and the boys bounced balls off storefronts and set fires in urban squares.

In the past, girls' freedom ended by adolescence, as parents of all social classes and races were anxious to protect their maturing daughters' sexual purity. Middle-class girls were encouraged to avoid foods thought to stir sexual desire, including coffee, tea, chocolate and especially red meat. Less well-off parents worried less about food than actual sexual encounters between their working girls and male co-workers.

"Parents who feared their daughters' virginity was at risk sometimes placed them in juvenile reformatories for their own protection," Clement said.

Though free public education was available to most children, few stayed in school long. Most had to go to work on farms, factories, or in homes, and the schooling they received was not considered interesting. Teachers were largely young and ill-prepared, discouraged creative thinking and, instead, rewarded students for memorizing and reciting facts. School textbooks were far from "politically correct" by today's standards, and usually described Blacks, Irish and Italians in a demeaning way.

"One of the saddest things these children had in common was the likelihood that they would die young," Clement notes.

Parents of all social classes were largely helpless in preventing their youngsters from contracting infectious diseases, gastrointestinal diseases and respiratory diseases. In 1895, 18 percent of American children died before age 5.

Professor Clement has written extensively in books and scholarly articles on children in history, often focusing on women and children in poverty and on welfare.

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Contact: For media interviews, contact Nancy Crabb at (610) 648-3276 or at nmh1@psu.edu on the Internet.