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Review
| Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood, by Steven Mintz. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2004. 445 pages. 29.95, cloth.
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| Huck's Raft challenges romantic myths and offers sharp assessments of American childhood. Mintz's 'raft' symbolizes the idea of childhood as a world apart from that of adults. Unlike Huck, who found a mentor of sorts in Jim, today's youth lack extra-familial adult contacts beyond the classroom, team, or organized group. Adolescents experience commercial and cultural youthful autonomy alongside prolonged dependence. They are, Mintz argues, age-segregated, denied opportunities to contribute meaningfully to their communities, and permitted few prospects for self-discovery. Mintz sketches the roots of modern childhood, blending original research with graceful synthesis to provide rich description and analytic sweep. The Puritans criminalized child abuse and introduced schooling while the middle colonies hatched the beginnings of modern family life, characterized by intergenerational affection, less strict childrearing, and greater independence. The Revolution weakened patriarchal authority, focusing attention on child rearing and education. Early republican middle-class families sheltered their children and lengthened their dependence. |
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With industrialization, however, laboring families needed "the useful child" more than ever while the middle class constructed "the protected child," whose greatest champions were the child-savers of the late 19th century (152). While acknowledging the limitations of middle-class reformers, Mintz celebrates their aims "as an inspiration and a rebuke to Americans today." (156). Progressive reformers reduced infant mortality, built urban playgrounds, created day nurseries and kindergartens, enacted compulsory schooling laws, and established juvenile courts. Only child labor withstood their reformist efforts. Educators and psychologists observed and quantified children's behavior and activities, advising parents on scientific childrearing, as they carefully demarcated stages of development, now including adolescence. During the period between the 1920s to 1940s high school became nearly universal. This era introduced a 'commercial children's culture' that would set teenagers apart as families became increasingly private, young people associated with their peers, and youths monitored their own dating. The war period t placed a premium on family and in the 1950s parents sought to provide their children with perfect childhoods. These privileged teens became increasingly significant consumers and brought about a long-nascent generation gap in the 1960s. |
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It was African-American teens who revolutionized American society by challenging educational segregation at great personal peril. They created an era in which 'students transformed schools into arenas of cultural and political conflict' (325). The courts of the 1960s reflected young people's self-assertion. Decisions supported the right to free speech within school walls, recognized juvenile offenders' right to representation, and Congress granted eighteen-year-olds the right to vote. As the 20th century closed, however, children appeared to be in crisis. Fears of juvenile crime led to higher minimum sentencing laws, support for trying juveniles as adults, curfews, and to zero-tolerance policies for smoking, drinking, or using illicit drugs at school. This increased the power of school authorities to discipline students and led the courts to reverse the broadening of children's rights achieved in the 1960s. Conservatives and liberals alike supported policies that strengthened school and parental authority. |
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Offering cogent analysis of the school shootings that clustered at the end of the twentieth century, Mintz underscores the resentment and powerlessness of many youths. Adolescents have autonomy in the marketplace but lack it in schools that test them, cut programs that foster self-expression, and increasingly, and increasing required school the year round. They receive mixed messages that simultaneously inflate their sophistication and limit their ability to act. Refreshingly, unlike many historians, Mintz proposes reform goals. Arm young people with knowledge rather than sheltering them. Utilize governmental policy to ensure that the basic needs of the nation's children are met. End age segregation and find something of greater value to occupy these autonomous yet monitored young people than afternoons spent at the mall or in rigidly scheduled activities and evenings at the computer screen. Recognize alternative paths to adulthood. He offers these suggestion to policy makers and parents alike. |
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Perfect for upper division family history and social history courses, Huck's Raft offers excellent material and insights for history teachers at all levels. Rich with analysis, it deftly contextualizes the birth of the culture of consumerism and alienation and is replete with vignettes of young people's experiences in the past to enliven presentations targeted at any grade. Attentive to diversity, it details slavery and racism's impact on African-American childhood, explores immigrant childhood, depicts the challenges faced by children raised in poverty and weaves in brief accounts of Native American experiences. Mintz reminds us that although we may idolize youthfulness, we allow actual children to suffer greatly from unfulfilled needs. Historians of family and childhood will find it an essential starting point and make reference to it often. As this passionate and scholarly narrative illustrates, studying the history of its children teaches us our nation's history. |
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| California State University East Bay |
Jessica Weiss |
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