| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood. By Steven Mintz. (Cambridge: Belknap, 2004. xiv, 445 pp. $29.95, isbn 0-674-01508-8.)
Readers who board Huck's Raft will find the journey immensely rewarding. Steven Mintz, Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston, surveys the history of American childhood over a three-century sweep, from the early seventeenth to the late twentieth centuries. This comprehensive monograph clearly makes its case: the experiences of American children should not be treated as a marginal subject. Indeed, their lives illustrate many of the key themes of national development—from the impact of slavery to that of industrialization to the emergence of a welfare state. And adults have long used the young as symbols for their own fantasies and fears. Images of childhood reflect larger cultural obsessions: Was Huck a spirited young adventurer? Was he a hyperactive, abused child?	1
Three themes organize Mintz's ambitious study. First: childhood, a set of adult rules to govern the young, is a social construct that has changed over time and has never been universally applied. Second: social class has been the most significant determinant of children's well-being. Third: degrees of independence provide a signifier of children's actual condition.	. . .

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