The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of Growing Up in America since 1865 by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg (review)

In July 2016, Niantic, a mobile game development company, published Pokémon GO, an augmented reality application for mobile devices using a combination of GPS and mapping to let players roam the world to find Pokémon. The game was widely lauded not only for its innovation in augmented reality gaming, but praised for its ability to get people outdoors. In addition to getting players outside, a feature of the game counted the number of steps taken and rewarded players with new Pokémon eggs. The combination of getting people outdoors coupled with physical activity was praised by many as a positive development for a society ostensibly glued to their screens.

Despite this gaming hit, observers have long lamented the predominance of technological devices— ranging from televisions to video games— that keep children indoors, one of a variety of reasons children moved indoors for play. How we reached this point in American culture is the motivation behind Pamela Riney-Kehrberg’s The Nature of Childhood. The core question behind Riney-Kehrberg’s book is the transformation of “outdoor children” into “indoor children” over the last 150 years.

Riney-Kehrberg focuses her attention primarily on the Midwest and Great Plains, starting with the farm children around the end of the Civil War just as the United States rushed headlong into rapid urbanization and industrialization. Her story continues chronologically, ending in the earliest days of the twenty-first century. Her aim is to explain why and how children need to be “cajoled” to go outside (5), contending that children’s focus has “moved indoors, and away from the naturally occurring and constructed landscapes beyond their homes” (5). Through seven chapters, she explores the role of children on farms, cities, the social transformations of the twentieth century, and the lure of the indoors.

Chapter 1 explores rural children and their “premodern” lives in close proximity to the landscape. Chapter 2 reveals how urban children transformed urban spaces into play areas. Chapter 3 examines summer camps, scouting, and education as children were losing their natural play areas. Chapter 4 illuminates the “tug-of-war between the lure of the indoors and the adult desires to get children outdoors” in the mid-twentieth century.

As “nature experience” receded in the face of urbanization, the movement of children from the country to the city cultivated a sheltering of them. Yet even as adults became wary about the outside world, children continued to pursue outdoor play. Nor were adults ignoring the need for nature. At the turn of the century, they responded with summer camps, organizations, and education curricula to provide children with a chance to experience nature.

For all its focus on children, Riney-Kehrberg’s book feels like it is more about adults. She does not lay blame for sheltering children indoors on urbanization, technology, or population growth, but at the growing fear parents felt about the dangers in the world. Despite the best intentions of adults, “the day of the free-roaming child, exploring urban, suburban or wild spaces seemed to be over” (9). That fear could have been more fully explored in the book. The move indoors seemed to coincide with the post-World War II era, as fears about atomic bombs, Communism, and chemicals crept into various aspects of American life. How fears about children’s safety fit into society’s Cold War anxiety may have illuminated more about the shift to the indoors.

Riney-Kehrberg captures the voices of children through a wide range of sources including manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, and reminiscences from archival sources found in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, and Nebraska. She captures well the voices of children, allowing them to speak for their role in the story. Riney-Kehrberg’s book will be excellent for readers looking for an overview of the shift to indoor play since the Civil War and the impact of children having...