| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg. Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, and Coming of Age in the Midwest. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2005. Pp. xi, 300. $34.95.

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg's book is a valuable contribution to the history of the Midwest generally, and the history of childhood in the United States specifically. The book is based on a thorough examination of diaries, memoirs, and school records from a number of midwestern states, primarily Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Riney-Kehrberg's work confirms the thesis established by others (e.g. Elizabeth Hampsten in Settlers' Children: Growing Up on the Great Plains [1991]) that rural midwestern childhood was dominated by work, school, and play—in that order. More than other accounts dealing with the lives of children in the rural Midwest, however, Riney-Kehrberg's work includes sophisticated contrasts to larger (that is to say urban) cultural developments related to childhood. The result is that the reader has a better sense of what was lost and what was gained in the great agricultural transitions of the twentieth century. The book makes several significant contributions, including insights into differing ethnic beliefs and practices related to work (women of German and Scandinavian descent, for example, were far more likely to work in the fields then women of English ancestry); a thorough examination of Wisconsin State Public School records that sheds light on the circumstances faced by the very poorest children in rural Midwest society; and two longitudinal accounts that provide a glimpse of how the lives of rural teachers unfolded over time.

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