| Review | Journal of Social History, 41.1

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 41.1 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

American Behavioral History: An Introduction. Edited by Peter Stearns (New York: New York University Press, 2005. x plus 259 pp. $21.00).
Behavioral history, apparently a new approach to social studies, seeks to explain patterns of attitudes and behaviors in terms of social and cultural factors working in the past. It studies culturally-specific habits in regard to sex, death, child-rearing, family and home, consumption, etc., trying to understand how they got shaped in time. For example, "oral sex" seems to be a much more popular and well-accepted practice today than it was during the nineteenth century. Why that is, and how it happened—can only be explained by studying shifts in some of the prominent ideas, assumptions and values of society. Kevin White, in what is clearly the most ambitious essay in the volume, shows how "oral sex" has served to define egalitarian love. Fostered by the feminist and gay movements, it rose in value in opposition to the domination of procreative sexuality and challenged the hegemony of penetrative masculinity. It was embraced as part of the "fun ethic" of the postmodern era since it emphasized pleasure.	1
Part one of the book focuses on adult-child relationships. Gary Cross' opening essay, one of the strongest in the book, examines the concept of "the cute child," which emerged with consumer culture and helped present consumption as innocent, thus entailing the "cutesifying" of many a social ritual involving gifting and entertainment. Children's looks were conceptualized as "cute"—i.e., desirable in a non-sexual way—in congruence with twentieth-century emotional norms of love and affection. The cute child's "naughty-but-nice" behavior ensured the domestication of potentially destructive children's inclinations and bolstered parental power.	2
Growing parental supervision of children, another noticeable twentiethcentury tendency, is usually explained by increased threats of child abduction. However, here, Paula Fass suggests that the real reason behind today's parental preoccupation with children's lives is the cultural trend of redefining sex and gender norms and the general sexual liberalization of society.	. . .

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