Growing Up: The History of Childhood in Global Context

Lecture 1

Lecture 1 Childhood in Agricultural Societies The Emergence and Elaboration of a Powerful Model Childhood in world history requires a general introduction, but there is risk of too much abstraction early on: so first, a few vignettes, all drawn at least in part from childhood in the agricultural period of the human experience, which is the specific topic of this first paper. One of Muhammad’s important emphases, as founder of Islam, was his prohibition against female infanticide. This leads to several major questions. Why are some agricultural societies more willing than others to use infanticide as an ex post facto form of birth control? Where does infanticide fit into a picture of adult attitudes toward children? Did Islam promote significant changes more generally in the approach toward children and childhood? When Europeans with families began to arrive in North America, one of their practices that appalled native Americans was the use of physical discipline against children. The seventeenth century happened to be one of the tougher periods in the history of Western discipline, but it is also true that Western attitudes have often promoted a relationship between adults and children that has seemed strange to other societies. (A recent manifestation is the distaste expressed by most urban African consumers at the 1 idea of putting infants in strollers, as opposed to keeping them physically close to mothers.1) We react with shock, even outrage, at the role of child soldiers in some of the current civil strife in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia—areas of the world that are still heavily agricultural. There are indeed important new features in this phenomenon. One involves the guns themselves: children have never had such access to murderous weaponry as they have gained, in many parts of the world, during the later twentieth century. But another novelty is less expected: the fact that we are so appalled at the very idea of children serving in armies. Large numbers of the participants in the armies of the American revolution (Americans, but also Hessians brought in by the British), were fourteen- and fifteenyear olds, and there were even soldiers as young as eight. Many Roman boys rushed to the army because it was preferable to agricultural labor and parental direction. Service in the military was a common outlet for young people in premodern societies, and obviously it has remained so—what’s odd, historically, is that so many of us have decided that this traditional practice is a violation of what childhood should be. Clearly, as I hope all these examples suggest, we need more historical understanding of childhood, and on a fairly wide geographical and chronological scale. Attempting to outline a world history of childhood is, obviously , an ambitious undertaking. Difficulties and limitations are considerable, and we must turn to these in further detail in a moment. I venture a sketch for two reasons. First, from a world history standpoint, it is important to branch out into this kind of history. World history is a rich field with a host of important discoveries to its credit. Recent research within a world history framework has added to our knowledge of environmental and biological developments, of migration patterns, and of relationships among major societies with particular attention to the economic vitality of East Asia. Yet a world history context has been only fitfully applied to some of the more private or personal aspects of the human experience, with the result that the field can often 2 Growing Up 1 Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958). 2 Paula Fass, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Childhood: In History and Society, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003). Childhood in Agricultural Societies 3 seem dominated by anonymous forces—trade relations still constitute the most systematic world history focus—without clear applicability to the ways most people actually experience their lives. Dealing with the history of childhood through attention to world history emphases, including comparative analysis, allows us to explore additional implications in the field, utilizing but not simply repeating existing world history markers that include of course basic chronology or periodization. The intent is both to illustrate and to contribute to the world history approach. The second spur to this sketch focuses on childhood. Research on the history of childhood, which receded during the 1980s for several reasons, is now reviving strongly, a welcome development...