| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Dependent States: The Child's Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. By Karen Sánchez-Eppler. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xxviii, 260 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-226-73459-5.)

Dependent States ends with a series of questions, which is fitting for a book that takes a complex and multifaceted approach to the role that children played in the evolution of American culture from the 1820s through the 1870s. Throughout her book, Karen Sánchez-Eppler explores the relationship between the history of childhood as a cultural construct and the lives of real children. She poses many questions related to the cultural symbolism associated with children as well as questions about the responses that children and parents had when confronted with the various symbols. However, she does not provide simple answers to these questions. Her goal is not to write a straightforward history of childhood in nineteenth-century America but rather to bring to the surface some of the underlying tensions in American culture concerning childhood, child rearing, and family.

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