While reading Stearns\u2019 full work, I couldn\u2019t help but feel the same lack of faith towards delving into \u2018history-ing\u2019 children as a discipline, because I again found Stearns\u2019 focus to be more about the impacts adults and society had on<\/i> children during their respective eras rather than of the childhoods themselves. For example, Stearns spends a good deal of time examining various punishments enacted on children for misbehaving acts. Similar to our discussion last week, studying punishments (frankly) is convenient! They\u2019re convenient because they have been acts enacted by older generations who can easily recall how they punished youngsters.<\/p>\n
Stearns also spends a lot of time discussing issues of inheritance, which I understood but also didn\u2019t understand. I felt like (again), delving into issues like inheritance is a fairly \u2018convenient\u2019 way to explore the history of childhood, because again, children aren\u2019t known to be responsible for the handing down of inheritance \u2013 they simply are on the receiving end \u2013 and usually these children make decisions about their respective inheritances when they are significantly older (no longer children). This, again, to me at least is confusing because is Stearns really<\/i> getting at a history of childhood by examining aspects of childhood that are essentially placed \u2018on\u2019 children by adults \u2013 which adults then use to examine the histories of childhood that they create. Stearns also focuses on when children, across a plethora of cultures, begin attending educational institutions. Maybe I\u2019m getting carried away here by labeling these sources as \u2018convenient\u2019 and accusing these historians on founding their histories on a seemingly pseudo-basis, but employing enrollment statistics to help delve into the history of childhood is yet again using a source formed by adults to serve their adult<\/span> needs; but isn\u2019t that what part of the goal of examining the history of childhood is? To essentially examine the roots of adults\u2019 own mannerisms and desires.<\/p>\n Despite the difficulty I have wrapping my head around the foundations of the history of childhood and the history of children, I found an interest in the importance of children\u2019s happiness. Part of this interest stems from a point I made in class last week that apparently made its way into Stearns\u2019 pages. My point in class last week was that because historians have acknowledged the difficulty in processing the history of childhood, some may have delved into it during the 16th<\/sup>-18th<\/sup> centuries but gave up. Stearns acknowledges this when he mentions discussions of children\u2019s happiness occurring during the early 1800s. Stearns writes, \u201c\u2026actual discussions of children in terms of happiness surfaced surprisingly slowly. There were some references in England, around 1800, but nothing very systematic\u201d (157)\u2026 in my eyes, this means that the historians at the time gave up because the task seemed too challenging, which leaves our class with a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While reading Stearns\u2019 full work, I couldn\u2019t help but feel the same lack of faith towards delving into \u2018history-ing\u2019 children as a discipline, because I again found Stearns\u2019 focus to be more about the impacts adults and society had on … Continue reading