A History of Childhood in the United States

A History of Childhood in the United States examines how American political and economic development has depended upon the systematic organization of children’s lives, labor, and futures. The book treats childhood as a central political institution rather than a private or natural stage of life, showing how ideas about innocence, dependency, education, and maturity emerged alongside settler expansion, industrial capitalism, and liberal democracy.

Moving chronologically from the colonial period to the present, the book traces how children were mobilized as workers, settlers, students, and symbols of national destiny. It shows how land appropriation, slavery, industrialization, compulsory schooling, and modern welfare and family policy each reorganized childhood in ways that secured adult power while deferring children’s claims to autonomy, resources, and political voice. Across these periods, the promise of future freedom functioned as a governing principle that justified present exploitation and discipline.

The book argues that American ideals of opportunity, independence, and self making were built through a durable system of generational inequality that separated children from political agency and material security while treating that separation as temporary and benevolent. By placing children at the center of national history, A History of Childhood in the United States reframes democracy itself as an intergenerational project and raises fundamental questions about freedom, justice, and whose lives are treated as fully political in the American story.