Children and Childhood

383 Pages·2007·7.78 MB·English

Volume2 8/22/03 10:57 AM Page 1
Encyclopedia of
Children and Childhood
In History and Society
child_fm 8/28/03 4:15 PM Page ii
Editorial Board
Editorial Board
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Paula S. Fass
University of California, Berkeley
EDITORIAL BOARD
Ning de Coninck-Smith
The Danish University of Education
Anne Higonnet
Barnard College
Stephen Lassonde
Yale University
Peter N. Stearns
George Mason University
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Natalie Zemon Davis
Princeton University
Michael Grossberg
Indiana University
Tobias Hecht
Independent Scholar
David I. Kertzer
Brown University
Susan Schweik
University of California, Berkeley
Viviana A. Zelizer
Princeton University
Volume2 8/22/03 10:57 AM Page 3
Encyclopedia of
Children and Childhood
In History and Society
Paula S. Fass, Editor in Chief
Volume 2
F-R
child_fm 8/28/03 4:15 PM Page iv
Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society
Paula S. Fass, Editor in Chief
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Encyclopedia of children and childhood : in history and society / edited
by Paula S. Fass.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-02-865714-4 (set hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-02-865715-2
(Volume 1) — ISBN 0-02-865716-0 (Volume 2) — ISBN 0-02-865717-9
(Volume 3)
1. Children—Encyclopedias. I. Fass, Paula S.
HQ767.84.E53 2003
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F
Fairy Tales and Fables tra / Kalila and Dimna admixture were incorporated into the
Latin exempla collection for use in church sermons in the
Fables provided instructional reading for European children thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, the way had been
from the Middle Ages well into the nineteenth century. Fairy prepared for their use in schools throughout Christian Eu-
tales for children, on the other hand, were relative late- rope. From the High Middle Ages through Galland’s early
comers for child readers, appearing in the early eighteenth eighteenth-century translation, fables powerfully influenced
century but becoming popular only from the later eigh- European storytelling.
teenth century onward.
The sudden flourishing of published animal fables for
Fables children in late seventeenth-century England reveals the
In the western world, brief animal fables with an appended presence of a reading appetite no longer satisfied by a rigor-
moral are generally identified as Aesop’s fables. Although at- ous diet of gory Protestant martyrdoms, fervid child deaths,
tributed to Aesop, reputedly a freed Greek slave living in the and earnest religious directives. Much of England’s Chris-
sixth century B.C.E., the body of work took shape over centu- tian practice had softened, as evidenced by the runaway suc-
ries, absorbing tales from disparate sources, such as the Hel- cess of the popular religious writer John Bunyan’s allegorical
lenistic Recensio Augustana, whose animal protagonists typi- narratives. Many of hymn-writer Isaac Watts’s Moral Songs,
cally had predictable characteristics: a cunning fox, a strong though religious in category, nonetheless taught children
lion, a proud eagle. about living harmoniously within a close family circle. Fables
went one step further and provided moralized worldly narra-
Aesopic fables have dramatic plots, clear construction, tives about how to live on earth. Isolated editions appeared
and striking dialogue leading to a general moral that can eas- in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the sudden
ily be summarized in proverbial form. Fables are above all publishing success of Aesopica between the 1690s and the
a didactic genre. Many Romans—Ennius, Lucilius, Horace, 1740s demonstrates that parental child-rearing imperatives
Livy—used Aesopic fables as exempla (short stories that il- had moved far away from purely religious injunction in those
lustrate a particular moral or argument), but Phaedrus years. The narrative-cum-moral form, so warmly recom-
strengthened their didactic elements in order to produce a mended by English philosopher JOHN LOCKE, enabled En-
guide for moral instruction. lightenment educationists to incorporate interpretations
that expressed rational values.
Medieval Aesopica flowered in the eleventh century and
grew larger in the twelfth century, as Johannes of Capua’s Internationally, Jean de La Fontaine’s book of 245 fables
edition absorbed fables from the Indian Panchatantra. The (in three parts 1668, 1678–1679, 1693) prepared the way for
Panchatantra (Five Books or Five Teachings)—a story cycle an enormous efflorescence of fables in England, Germany,
consisting of fables about animals whose actions demon- Italy, and France in the eighteenth century. In England, fa-
strate the wise conduct of life and the knowledge of ruling— bles’ success can be measured by their remarkable publishing
had emerged sometime before 250 C.E. Translated into Per- history. Caxton printed an English translation of Aesop’s fa-
sian as Kalila and Dimna in the sixth century, these Eastern bles in 1484; Roger l’Estrange’s 1692 collection, Fables of
fables spread in multitudinous reworked forms in Arabic Aesop and other eminent mythologists (Barlandus-Anianus-
translation from the Middle East to northern Africa and Abstemius-Poggius) with morals and reflexions, was republished
Moorish Spain. Once Aesopic fables with their Panchatan- with remarkable frequency throughout the late seventeenth
337
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Fairy Tales and Fables
and early eighteenth century. The success of L’Estrange’s fa- Fairy Tales
bles encouraged imitators and competitors, and so Reverend Fairy tales, as they exist today, took shape in sixteenth-
Samuel Croxall produced his Fables of Aesop and Others in century Italy as literature for adults in a handful of tales in
1722. It, too, enjoyed an enormous success (being reprinted Pleasant Nights (1551, 1553) by Giovan Francesco Stra-
five times between 1722 and 1747), as did John Gay’s Aesop- parola. These made their way to France, as did the Pentamer-
ic fables (1727, 1738). one (1634–1636) of Giambattista Basile, where both underlay
French fairy tales published from 1697 onward by Marie
Fables passed early into school use. The London publish- Catherine Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d’Aulnoy (c.
er S. Harding marketed Amusing and Instructive Fables in 1650–1705), Charles Perrault (1628–1703), and other
French and English in 1732. La Fontaine’s Fables and Tales French retellers of the genre. In England, fairy tales were not
. . . in French and English (1734) and Daniel Bellamy’s trans- a presence during the seventeenth century. At that time it
lation of Phaedrus’s Fifty Instructive and Entertaining Fables was chapbook romances, whose heroes bravely encountered
(1734, 1753), both intended for youth in schools, immedi- and courageously vanquished magical or gigantic opponents,
ately joined them, as did FRANÇOIS FÉNELON’s Tales and Fa- that fired boys’ imaginations. If girls read chapbook ro-
bles (1736) and Gabriel Faerno’s Fables in English and French mances recreationally in the same period, women’s memoirs
Verse (1741). The latter also appeared in Latin and French do not mention it, generally reporting only devotional read-
(1743, 1744). Benjamin Cole put his name on a collection, ing.
Select Tales and Fables (1746). In 1747 The Instructive and En-
tertaining Fables of Bidpai (tales derived from the Pancha- England’s fairies and elves, which offered little in the way
tantra) appeared in English for the first time. The pace of of narrative adventure, were chiefly anecdotal and explanato-
newly introduced fable books attests to market success for ry rather than narrative figures. Only with the introduction
this genre, as each printing evidently sold out quickly of French fairy narratives can extended tales about fairies and
enough to warrant new printings and new versions. As al- fairy tales be said to have begun an English existence. De-
ways England’s chapbook (small, inexpensive paper book- spite decades of assertions about the oral transmission of
lets) publishers picked up whatever sold well, and in this case fairy tales from nursemaids to children in times past, no evi-
the Dicey printing house put out John Bickham’s Fables and dence exists to support the belief. Tom Thumb, whose ad-
Other Short Poems as early as 1737. ventures included a fairy patroness, was created in the early
seventeenth century by Richard Johnson; Jack, the killer of
John Newbery included several fables in Little Pretty giants, came to life a century later. Both supplied English
Pocket-Book (1744) and Goody Two-Shoes (1766), and in 1757 imaginations with thumping good magic for centuries, but
Newbery himself produced Fables in Verse. For the Improve- both are, strictly speaking, folk, not fairy, tales.
ment of the Young and the Old. Attributed jokily to Abraham
Aesop, Esq., Newbery’s book was reprinted on ten separate In the eighteenth century two bodies of fairy literature
occasions. Other fable books appeared, such as the simply reached English shores. From 1699 to 1750 Mme d’Aulnoy’s
entitled 1759 Fables and Robert Dodsley’s Select Fables of tales were translated and published for adult women readers,
Aesop and Other Fabulists (1761). Children read these and first for the upper class, and later for ever lower social classes.
other fable books long after their original dates of publica- Robert Samber’s 1729 translation of Charles Perrault’s tales
tion, as attested by the multigenerational ownership in- for child readers did not sell well as leisure reading; in conse-
scribed onto many of these books’ flyleaves. quence, its publishers attempted to recast the book as a
French-English schoolbook. With many other dual-
When fables had to share the market with fairy tales from
language texts available for school use, however, Perrault’s
the end of the eighteenth century onward, they diminished
tales foundered, perhaps because of their inclusion of “The
in significance. Nonetheless, fables have continued to form
Discreet Princess” with its questionable morality.
a staple of children’s literature and children’s reading in a
broad variety of (principally illustrated) editions to the pres- It was Mme Le Prince de Beaumont who made fairy tales
ent day. The classic historian of children’s literature, Harvey socially acceptable for middle and upper-middle class girls in
Darton, wrote that fables “had been regimented for schools her Magasin des Enfants (starting in 1756), when she alternat-
and decked out for fashion. It had been Everyman’s and now ed highly moralized versions of existing fairy tales with
was Everychild’s” (p. 23). equally moralized Bible stories, interleaving both with les-
sons in history and geography. Of all Mme Le Prince’s fairy
Animal stories of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and
tales, only her “Beauty and the Beast” has survived.
twentieth centuries may also be understood as a natural out-
growth of eighteenth-century Aesopic fables. An outstand- Selected tales from the Arabian Nights began to appear in
ing change from 1800 onward was a shift in animal attributes English chapbooks from about 1715 onward; the tales of
towards positive personal characteristics of courage, pa- Perrault and Mme d’Aulnoy, on the other hand, spread via
tience, loyalty, and endurance that remains evident in twen- chapbooks to English readers only after the 1750s. Perhaps
tieth-century stories such as Lassie and Black Beauty. they picked up fairy tales’ potential for popular consumption
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Family Patterns
from John Newbery’s 1743 inclusion of “Red Riding Hood Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie. 1980 [1974]. The Classic Fairy Tales.
and “Cinderilla” [sic] in his Pretty Book for Boys and Girls. Ever New York: Oxford University Press.
cautious, Newbery gradually introduced fairy tales into his Wardetzky, Kristin. 1992. Märchen—Lesarten von Kindern: Eine em-
pirische Studie. Frankfurt, Germany: Lang.
publications by including some of Fenelon’s highly moral-
Wheatley, Edward. 2000. Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education,
ized fairy tales in his Short Histories for the Improvement of the
Chaucer, and His Followers. Gainesville: University Press of Flori-
Mind (1760); putting “Fortunatus” and a version of Per-
da.
rault’s “Diamonds and Toads” into a later edition of the
Pretty Book, and introducing “Puss in Boots” into The Fairing RUTH B. BOTTIGHEIMER
in 1767. Later firms, however, published all of Perrault’s
tales, minus “The Discreet Princess,” and propelled those
tales, along with Mme d’Aulnoy’s “Yellow Dwarf” and Family Patterns
“White Cat,” into their nineteenth-century popularity.
Throughout history, family composition has affected chil-
Despite the disapproval of sober educators such as Sarah
dren’s lives in important ways. The size and structure of the
Trimmer, Robert Bloomfield, and Mary Martha Sherwood,
family and its capacity to sustain itself has played a critical
England’s nineteenth-century fairy tales were joined by Ed-
role in how children are raised, their level of formal educa-
ward Taylor’s translation of the Grimms’ tales (vol. 1 in
tion, and whether or not they participate in the labor force.
1823, vol. 2 in 1826); Hans Christian Andersen’s tales in
The principal household structures are nuclear, extended,
1846; Basile’s bowdlerized Pentamerone in 1848; The Fairy
and blended. The nuclear household contains two genera-
Tales of All Nations in 1849; and Scandinavian myths, folk
tions, parents and children. Extended families are multigen-
tales, and fairy tales in the 1850s. All of these tales were recir-
erational and include a wide circle of kin and servants. In
culated through late nineteenth-century editions, a practice
blended households—the result of divorce or the death of a
that continued in the twentieth century. However, fairies
spouse followed by remarriage and a new generation of chil-
and fairy tales enjoyed far more currency in England than in
dren—mothers and fathers can be both biological parents
the United States in the nineteenth century.
and STEPPARENTS simultaneously.
The relationship of fairy tales to the lives of children is Patterns of Family Structure through the Modern Era
much debated. In the United States and England in the wake Household structure took a variety of forms throughout Eu-
of World War II, a distrust of the Grimms’ tales developed rope and North America during the fifteenth to eighteenth
(the ferocious gore in some of their tales was thought to have centuries. Research during the late twentieth century on Eu-
encouraged genocide), a distrust that Bruno Bettelheim ropean family systems situated these forms within sharp geo-
countered in The Uses of Enchantment (1976). Bettelheim im- graphical boundaries over time. Those models, however,
plied that fairy tales arose from children’s own subconscious have since been adjusted, with consensus that geographical
as he sought to demonstrate that fairy tales accurately pro- areas held more than one family pattern contemporaneously.
jected children’s psychological needs and neatly described Moreover, household systems sometimes changed over his-
their psychosexual development. However, his neo-Freudian torical cycles. Finally, households were not necessarily au-
approach to textual analysis was often flawed by lapses in tonomous but part of a wider network of relations with the
logic and by the substitution of assertion for proof. In con- community. The nuclear family, with late marriage preceded
trast, Kristin Wardetzky’s research in the 1980s, based on a by a term of service in another household, was one common
sample of 1,500 schoolchildren, rested on an awareness that form in northwest Europe and North America, while multi-
children’s early and continuing exposure to books of fairy generational households were common to southern and east-
tales suffused their consciousness with fairy-tale characters, ern Europe. In Albania, Bulgaria, and European Russia as
norms, and motifs. Wardetzky’s analysis of fairy tales written well as some parts of Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, new
by children themselves demonstrated that their narratives households were formed when large ones divided or small
used standard fairy-tale motifs to bring evil under control ones combined. Marriage was not restricted to one son or
and to (re)establish domestic harmony. daughter, there were few servants save for the rich, and
households were home to multiple married couples. Chil-
See also: ABC Books; Children’s Literature.
dren thus were supervised by co-resident adult kin. Else-
BIBLIOGRAPHY where, in parts of central and southern France, Italy, Austria,
and Germany, nuclear households combined with the fission
Bettelheim, Bruno. 1976. The Uses of Enchantment. New York:
Knopf. and fusion processes of the East and South. Others con-
tained two residential married couples consisting of parents
Bottigheimer, Ruth. 2002. “Misperceived Perceptions: Perrault’s
Fairy Tales and English Children’s Literature.” Children’s Liter- and a married son. This usually occurred when there was not
ature 30. enough land to start a separate household.
Darton, Harvey. 1982. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of
Age at marriage and life expectancy were two important
Social Life. Revised by Brian Alderson. Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press. variables influencing household structure. Early marriage
Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood 339
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Family Patterns
permitted a longer cycle of fertility than marrying late. Late they were sent to work as domestic servants, laborers, or ap-
marriage for women, from the mid to late twenties, was a prentices, living in employers’ houses. Frequently in north-
means of restricting the number of births per household. west Europe and North America, marriage took place only
Late marriage for men may or may not have affected the when the couple could afford to set up an independent
household’s fertility cycle. It did, however, impinge upon the household. Life-cycle servitude followed by late marriage
number of years fathers would be available to their children. was common because it was only at that stage that couples
The same was true for mothers. In fact one or both parents had accumulated the resources needed to set up the custom-
could be expected to die during the child’s lifetime during ary separate household. In extended families, on the other
the early modern period, creating the potential for economic hand, where married children were joining a preestablished
hardship. There was a large percentage of ORPHANS, many household, age at marriage was normally younger. The main
of whom were farmed out to other families as servants, la- consideration in deciding whether to marry was whether the
borers, or apprentices. They lived with their employers rath- new couple had the means to sustain a new family. Ten to
er than in their natal households. In other cases, the death 15 percent of the population never achieved the means to
of a parent brought remarriage, new stepsiblings, and the marry.
constitution of a blended family. This was common, for ex-
Until the end of the nineteenth century, land was perhaps
ample, in New England and the Chesapeake area of North
the most important financial resource for the majority of the
America during the colonial era. Children too died young.
population. Its availability and how it was managed affected
INFANT MORTALITY rates were very high during the early
household composition. Firm assurance of land tenure, even
modern period, making it highly uncertain whether parents
in conditions where land was scarce, could encourage the es-
could expect their children to reach an age when they could
tablishment of more complex households, while adequate
help support the family household or sustain them in their
landed resources lent itself to the establishment of small, in-
elderly years.
dependent households. Peasant families required an ade-
quate but not excess number of children to work the land.
INHERITANCE practices also affected household structure.
The nuclear household ideally contained several children
Primogeniture in the nuclear family insured that the patri-
spaced widely so that the oldest had left the household by the
mony remained intact, under the authority of the eldest son
time the youngest came along, thus avoiding surplus mouths
upon his father’s death. That son was expected to marry and
to feed. This was achieved by postponing marriage to the
carry on the family’s future over time. In a stem family, com-
late twenties for men and early twenties for women, a prac-
mon in Austria, brothers might work for the eldest sibling
tice that shortened their years of fertility. In addition, par-
but would not be allowed to marry or to inherit. Sisters
ents often sent their children to live and serve other house-
might marry or take vows, yet only the eldest son would in-
holds in need.
herit the family estate. Partible inheritance, on the other
hand, allowed for the formation of separate households
Yet not all peasants were able to avail themselves of land.
among all children. Extended families, whose size was gener-
Population growth and land shortage, characteristic of eigh-
ally limited by high mortality and low fertility, practiced
teenth-century North America, for example, forced sons to
joint inheritance, that is, shared ownership of their patri-
leave the family hearth. Landless villagers who sought em-
mony.
ployment where they could find it may not have formally
married but procreated. This often resulted in pools of aban-
During the early modern period another important vari-
doned women and children. On the other hand, some peas-
able influencing household structure was the family’s prox-
ant economies were replaced by more commercialized sys-
imity to a means of production and its ability to sustain itself.
tems in which rural households were centers of production
Climate, geography, the productivity of the land, and the
associated with the textile industry. Free markets created a
strength of the labor market all shaped household composi-
greater demand for labor, drawing families into the produc-
tion, and consequently childhood experience, in important
tion process. Children could remain at home rather than be
ways. They helped determine whether or not people married
farmed out to service if there was work allowing them to
and at what age, whether to try and restrict fertility, whether
contribute to the sustenance of the household. This was also
children worked and/or went to school, and whether or not
true when the center of production moved outside the home,
they would be able to live at home under the supervision of
a phenomenon characteristic of the nineteenth century. Fa-
their parents. Affluent households might have had less incen-
thers and children rather than mothers went to work in fac-
tive to restrict fertility since they did not depend on offspring
tories to support the family. In short, household composition
to contribute to the family economy. They did quite fre-
and children’s ability to remain living with their parents de-
quently, however, restrict marriage in order to keep the fam-
pended heavily on the availability of economic resources and
ily patrimony intact. Modest households, however, pres-
employment.
ented another case, for there children were an economic
liability. Children could remain under the family hearth only The household as a center of production affected child-
if there was a viable means of sustaining them. Otherwise hood experience. To age seven, even among slaveholders in
340 Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood
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Family Patterns
North America, children were generally exempt from work. would inherit land. The latter determined whether or not
But from then on they were gradually brought into the labor marriage would be possible. Broader trends affected ability
force. On farms young children collected firewood and to marry as well. In periods of demographic rise and land
worms on the vines, herded livestock, weeded, and helped shortage, marriage was delayed and restricted, while the op-
around the house. After age ten boys might be trained out- posite conditions encouraged early marriage. Although par-
side in fields and stables to learn to be farmers or herders, ents assumed responsibility for children’s religious instruc-
while girls were tracked into domestic work. By the eigh- tion, until the early twentieth century imparting vocational
teenth century children were helping with sewing, spinning, skills that would serve the means of production constituted
lace making, and nail making. Slave children in North Amer- the primary responsibility in child rearing.
ica had a similar experience, with light chores to age six and
The Twentieth Century
domestic or farm labor after age ten. In midwest and western
The parameters of household structure and childhood expe-
North America, where the labor market was small, gender
rience described above dramatically changed for the middle
roles were less rigid than normal. Girls worked in the tobac-
class during the first half of the twentieth century. The
co fields and did herding, harvesting, and hunting while boys
steady decline of the birthrate in Europe and North America
took on domestic duties as well as working outside. On the
from the nineteenth century was an important underpinning
frontier, children assumed duties earlier than in other re-
of this transformation. During the twentieth century highly
gions. The young panned gold as well as performing a vari-
ety of domestic chores. reliable BIRTH CONTROL methods and legalized abortion
made the one- or two-child family the norm. During the
1990s, for example, the average number of births per house-
When the household did not offer a means of production
hold in Italy was only 1.2, and in Muslim communities of
it affected children in dramatic ways. In the nineteenth cen-
Europe such as Albania they averaged no more than 2.5.
tury they left school at the minimum required by the state
With fewer children, parents devoted more time to their
and were put to work in factories, much to the horror of so-
proper care and upbringing. Other developments that con-
cial reformers, and they were not normally under parental
tributed to the transformations in household structure and
supervision. Cotton mills and coal mines, industries with
childhood experience included state intervention in child
steam power and machinery, drew children into the adult
labor market. In the cities poor children took to street sell- labor, rising real wages, COMPULSORY SCHOOL ATTENDANCE,
and new ideals of childhood and family life. Extended fami-
ing. All the while, domestic service was one of the largest
lies also declined. In the nineteenth century, a grandparent
employers of child labor. At the beginning of the nineteenth
often lived with an adult child and her children, and rates of
century children were 10 percent of the labor force in the
co-residence in Europe actually increased. But in the 1920s
American Northeast; by 1832 they constituted 40 percent.
older people began more consistently to live separately, a
sign of quiet change in family structure.
Childhood experience during the early modern period
was thus affected in numerous ways by family structure.
Increasing prosperity had the effect of extending child-
First, their primary caretakers differed according to the con-
hood beyond the minimum that had been experienced by
figuration of the household. In nuclear families, parents nor-
working-class families. For the more fortunate, life shifted
mally assumed responsibility for raising their children, while
from the farm, domestic manufacture, factory, or streets to
in extended and blended families other adults besides the
the home where parents nurtured and emotionally protected
parents might be involved in the lives of the children. That
youngsters and socialized them for the wider world. While
might include uncles, aunts, and GRANDPARENTS in multi- poorer children continued to receive minimum schooling so
generational extended families, while in a blended family,
that they could help support their families, middle-class chil-
where one parent has remarried and constituted a new fami-
dren increasingly withdrew from the labor force, enrolled in
ly, children might be raised by both a stepparent and a par-
schools, and became the focus of parental investment both
ent. In a nuclear household, children had economic and
emotionally and financially. The age at which children be-
emotional relationships with their parents alone, while in ex-
came wage earners for their families was thus delayed to the
tended and blended families the network of ties was poten-
late teens or beyond, and the period in which children re-
tially much larger. Domestic production in the home facili-
mained living in the parental household was prolonged. Eth-
tated both parents assuming responsibility for child rearing.
nicity and social class produced variation. Immigrants to
In the nineteenth century, when production moved outside
North America, for example, brought their own customs. If
the domestic hearth, mothers assumed more authority over
they were poor, they depended more on their children to be
children while fathers worked outside.
wage earners rather than students. Socially mobile immi-
grants placed greater emphasis on schooling and higher edu-
Another way household structure affected childhood was
cation.
that the quality of a child’s experience was directly affected
by whether he or she was expected to contribute to the finan- The transition from wage earner to schoolchild did not
cial well-being of the household and whether he or she occur in a linear fashion. World War II, for example, dis-
Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood 341
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Fascist Youth
rupted all aspects of family life and the family economy due Blended families require considerable emotional if not finan-
to separation, death, and financial hardship. Women entered cial adjustment. Children with SAME-SEX PARENTS also face
the workforce while men were at war, and children were complex social and emotional issues, including building per-
forced to mature more precipitously. However, from the spective on gender roles as well as dealing with the commu-
1950s, childhood in Europe and America became a defined nity’s reception of their nontraditional family structure. For
stage of the life cycle which preceded formal schooling and the most part, in the early twenty-first century gay marriage
vocational training and was clearly separate from the adult has not been legally recognized in the United States and has
world of work. Age at marriage dropped, birthrates were ex- been only marginally recognized in Europe. Children face
ceptionally high compared to preceding periods, and divorce larger challenges from society when their parents’ relation-
rates were low. There was a sharp gendered division of child- ship does not fit more familiar role models and is not sup-
rearing responsibilities, with mothers at home, ideally giving ported by the institutional structures that uphold heterosex-
affection and emotional support, and fathers out in the work ual marriage. On balance, same-sex parents are exceptionally
force supporting their families. There was a marked prefer- committed to caring for and nurturing their children. The
ence for residential independence. In North America fami- twenty-first century thus witnesses greater social complexi-
lies moved to suburbs where, with economic prosperity, they ties in household structure and family patterns that inevita-
could endow their children with material goods and better bly impact childhood, itself a structure continually in transi-
education. Middle-class children had more leisure time and tion.
money than ever before, but not without some cost: by the
See also: Apprenticeship; Child Labor in the West; Divorce
1990s the majority of parents worked outside the home to
and Custody; Economics and Children in Western Socie-
maintain consumption standards, leaving children in care fa-
ties; European Industrialization; Fertility Rates; Siblings.
cilities.
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342 Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood