Challenges in the History of Childhood

Abstract

The distinguished pioneer of the history of childhood and emotions, Peter Stearns, outlines a number of tasks and problems that await ambitious historians of children. One is familiar to practitioners in the field: creatively devising ways into the experience and imaginations of children who notoriously do not speak for themselves or leave records. This lack has left important gaps particularly in our understanding of young children, who have remained comparatively obscure to historians, while adolescents do, sometimes, leave traces of themselves, and parents and experts have traditionally left observations of the very young. Other significant tasks for historians include paying attention to class differences in analyses and making "a real commitment to comparison" as a historical method frequently lacking so far in much of the history of childhood.-M.S.

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