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More is known about ancient childhoods in the West than elsewhere in the world, but from what is known, all cultures believed that childhood was more than a phase of biological immaturity, and all developed institutions, practices, and concepts designed to bring children up to continue their cultures. “Traditions” describes what is known about childhood in prehistory, outside the ancient West, in the ancient West, and in pre-contact America. It goes on to consider the visions of childhood in Christianity, Islam, and other religions, and childhood in the medieval world. The life of a child was shaped by the rise of settled societies and complex economies, systems of belief, and philosophical and practical innovations. ...Less

The 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child, issued by the United Nations, provided a far more detailed and supposedly binding set of conditions and rights than the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which would define childhood globally. And yet the dying and injustice and exploitation continue. “The century of the child and beyond” considers the impact of war and conflict on children; the creation of global agencies and organizations designed to provide aid to and advocate for children; health, poverty, and quality of life; child labor and slavery; changes and challenges in education; modern forms of families; and the globalization of children’s culture. ...Less

‘Inventing new selves’ considers the New Negroes and their efforts to rescue the race and themselves from the stereotypes and caricatures that represented black Americans in the first decades of the twentieth century. It discusses works such as Alain Locke’s The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), which declared black Americans “spiritually emancipated;” Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) which became a touchstone for New Negro thought; the iconic photographs of James Van Der Zee that document the invention of modern black identity; and Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) , a novel with characters that move back and forth across the “color line,” thereby challenging definitions of race. ...Less

By the end of the nineteenth century Americans and western Europeans had arrived at a specific definition of a “modern” childhood, in which children could expect a number of things: that their childhood and youth would extend through adolescence, that their schooling would extend beyond a basic education, that many of their families’ social and economic resources would be devoted to their happiness and nurturing, and that they would increasingly be integrated into the developing consumer culture. “The rise of ‘modern’ childhoods” outlines the impact of the slave economy and colonization on childhood, working children and child exploitation during the industrial revolution, and how access to education became one of the hallmarks of a “modern” childhood. ...Less