Fass also features less well-known children like ten-year-old Rose Cohen, who worked in the drudgery of nineteenth-century factories. Grant-who, as an eleven-year-old, was in charge of his father’s fields and explored his rural Ohio countryside. She looks at the childhoods of icons including Margaret Mead and Ulysses S. But as parents today hover over every detail of their children’s lives, are the qualities that once made American childhood special still desired or possible? Placing the experiences of children and parents against the backdrop of social, political, and cultural shifts, Fass challenges Americans to reconnect with the beliefs that set the American understanding of childhood apart from the rest of the world.įass examines how freer relationships between American children and parents transformed the national culture, altered generational relationships among immigrants, helped create a new science of child development, and promoted a revolution in modern schooling. Renowned historian Paula Fass shows how, since the beginning of the American republic, independence, self-definition, and individual success have informed Americans’ attitudes toward children.

The End of American Childhood takes a sweeping look at the history of American childhood and parenting, from the nation’s founding to the present day.

From an american childhood