Growing Up in France from the Ancien Regime to the Third Republic (review)

In Growing Up in France, Heywood proposes to draw upon the insights of psychology, folklore, and literary analysis to delve more deeply into the historically changing experiences of children. Part I of the book begins with a useful if scattered summary of some of the literature about the use of autobiography and other "ego documents" (such as memoirs, diaries, and life histories) as historical sources. Next follows an informed and thoughtful summary of some of the Enlightenment-era debates among pedagogues and other theorists about the nature of childhood. This part ends with Heywood's exploration of models from psychology and folklore that address or theorize the stages of life. He does not offer any new material in this context, but he does appear to set up an inter-disciplinary approach to the history of childhood.

However, in the empirical sections that follow, focusing on growing up among close family and friends (Part II) and moving into the wider world (Part III), Heywood's interdisciplinary leanings prove to be of little consequence. The actual analysis of children's changing experience most often consists of generalizations gleaned from social-historical and institutional studies; the evidence from the ego documents provides random anecdotal illustration or empirical substantiation of the general claims. The sources are rarely discussed in the kind of nuanced fashion that the introductory framework leads the reader to expect. They are culled for snippets of empirical evidence rather than analyzed as documents of self-construction rooted in particular temporal, cultural, literary, social, and political contexts.

The book also calls into question its own focus on "France" as its national purview. It seems to take the nation-state framework for granted, even while presenting arguments that suggest that the historical developments under discussion were not particular to France. For example, in discussing the topic of motherhood, Heywood notes that "circumstances in nineteenth-century French society, as elsewhere in the West, favoured this cult of motherhood" (120). The book provides no developed argument about the "Frenchness" of the historical claims being made.

Heywood's sources about the history of childhood in France occasion a few keen insights; his cross-class comparisons are useful, although not pushed as far as they might be (the memoirs that Heywood cites could stand alone as documents of the history of class consciousness, among other things!). However, most of Heywood's claims about family and childhood seem unsurprising; they come across as re-statements of the social-historical findings of recent decades (Heywood's own earlier work included).¹

The history of childhood seems to be re-emerging as a field of interdisciplinary study. "Childhood Studies" has become a viable academic discipline, and the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth has launched an interdisciplinary journal. Despite the existing historical work on childhood, however, much remains to be done. The field of child-development psychology still awaits adequate historical grounding, to name just one enormous project. Heywood's work is noteworthy for its sensitivity to how class differences can affect children's lives and its appreciation for the "adaptability and resilience" of those children who manage to survive, and even thrive, despite the absence of parents (142). But the full development of such insights will require a more fully developed method for using ego documents in conjunction with other sources, as well as a more theoretically alert deployment of the evidence as a whole.