The history of childhood is often treated as a marginal, excessively sentimental, and under-theorized subject. It is frequently regarded as a subset: Youth Justice Criminology Assignment, QUB, Ireland

The history of childhood is often treated as a marginal, excessively sentimental, and under-theorized subject. It is frequently regarded as a subset of family history or as a minor aspect of cultural and intellectual history, focusing on adult ideas about children and artistic, cinematic, and literary representations of childhood. Yet, the history of childhood is anything but a trivial topic. Childhood, I shall argue, is the true missing link: connecting the personal and the public, the psychological and the sociological, the domestic and the state.

As a historian of the United States, this essay will draw on evidence from the US experience to underscore the significance of the history of childhood. Yet while the details would surely differ, I would like to suggest that this US-centric account of the ways that the history of childhood matters for a broad range of political and social issues has a broader purview. Because the implications of the history of childhood are highly context-specific, I hope that this essay will encourage readers to consider the relevance of the history of childhood for the
specific places and times that they study.

Not only are children inextricably engaged in the central events in the history of the United States—from colonization and revolution to industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and war—but the history of childhood is bound up with key cultural, economic, historical, psychological, and sociological themes.

An understanding of the history of childhood is essential, first of all, because the subject lies at the heart of many key historical themes, such as the growth of the state’s police and administrative powers, the rise of modern bureaucratic institutions, the development of the welfare state, the triumph of the therapeutic, and the emergence of modern criminal jurisprudence.

Secondly, the history of childhood encourages us to rethink what we mean when we speak of agency, identity formation, generational consciousness, and subcultures and their relationship with mainstream culture. Equally important, the history of childhood defamiliarizes the present and helps us understand the distinctiveness of contemporary society’s value system and social arrangements.