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Patterns of Dependency and Child Development in the Mid-Nineteenth Century City: A Sample from Boston 1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2017

Harvey J. Graff
Harvey J. Graff*
Affiliation:
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the University of Toronto
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Extract

The nature and state of the family has long been a major concern in the United States. It has been apparent in the literature and criticism since the Puritan arrival in the seventeenth century and may be followed thereafter. However, the family has not been a major concern of American historians. As Edward Saveth reminds us, in the 1962 Presidential Address of the American Historical Association, Carl Bridenbaugh spoke of the need for research in the neglected field of American family history and suggested that the profession assign a priority to this general area. Saveth, in 1969, concluded that “apart from some impressive work in historical demography, the situation has not altered.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Summer 1973 , pp. 129 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1 Saveth, Edward A., “The Problem of American Family History,” American Quarterly, 21 (Summer, 1969): 311.Google Scholar

2 This research was conducted as a “feasibility study,” thus the small and probably biased sample. However, it is hoped that the method is recognized as workable. For another recent attempt to study family history from a developmental perspective, using an age-structuring methodology, see Berkner, Lutz K., “The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant Household: An Eighteenth-Century Austrian Example,” American Historical Review, 77 (April, 1972): 298–318.Google Scholar

3 Bridges, William E., “Family Patterns and Social Values in America,” American Quarterly, 17 (Spring, 1965): 3–11; Kett, Joseph F., “Growing Up in Rural New England,” Anonymous Americans, ed. Tamara Hareven (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), pp. 3–16; and “Adolescence and Youth in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11 (Autumn, 1971): 282–298; and John, and Demos, Virginia, “Adolescence in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 31 (November, 1969): 632–638.Google Scholar

4 No attempt will be made here to relate these stages to psychological development and life cycle theory. However, no immediate contradictions are apparent; and, indeed, this is a major concern for further research.Google Scholar

5 To move beyond a simplistic discussion of occupational variation, it is necessary to link these census records to city assessment rolls. One should be extremely wary of making conclusions about class, status, wealth, or mobility from occupational titles. For a fine discussion of this and related problems, see Katz, Michael B., “Occupational Classification in History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, III (Summer, 1972): 63–88. For record-linkage, see Winchester, Ian, “The Linkage of Historical Records by Man and Computer: Techniques and Problems,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1 (Autumn, 1970): 107–124.Google Scholar

6 An alternative possibility would be a four-stage interpretation, with the third stage comprising ages sixteen to twenty-one for about one-half of the sons and ages sixteen to twenty-five for the rest.Google Scholar

7 Wells, Robert V., “Demographic Change and the Life Cycle of American Families,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, II (Autumn, 1971):281.Google Scholar

8 Demos and Demos, “Adolescence” : 633.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.Google Scholar

10 Beecher, Catherine, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School (Boston, 1842), p. 224; see also Young Bride at Home (Boston, 1836); Mrs. Child, The Mother's Book (Boston, 1831); Alcott, W.A., The Young Mother (Boston, 1836); The Mother's Assistant (Boston, 1840–1850); and Wishy, Bernard, The Child and the Republic (Philadelphia, 1967), Part 1.Google Scholar

11 Demos and Demos, “Adolescence”: 633; Wishy, , The Child and the Republic, Part 1; and Bridges, , “Family Patterns”: passim.Google Scholar

12 Beecher, op cit.: passim.Google Scholar

13 Kett, “Adolescence and Youth,” p. 285 & 286.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 287.Google Scholar

15 McLachlan, James, American Boarding Schools: A History (New York. 1971).Google Scholar

16 Kett, , “Growing Up,” passim, and “Adolescence and Youth,” p. 294.Google Scholar

17 Kett, , “Growing Up,” p. 10.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 13, 14.Google Scholar

19 Kett, , “Adolescence and Youth,”: 296 & 297.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., p. 288; Demos and Demos, “Adolescence”: 636–637.Google Scholar

21 Demos and Demos, “Adolescence”: 637.Google Scholar

22 Davis, Natalie Z., “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past and Present, 50 (February, 1971):41–75.Google Scholar

23 Kett, “Adolescence and Youth:” 295.Google Scholar

24 Bridges, “Family Patterns”: 10.Google Scholar

25 For a fascinating study of “growing up,” comparing data over time, see Katz, Michael B., “Growing Up in the Nineteenth Century,” Working Paper 31, Canadian Social History Project, Interim Report, 4 (Toronto, 1972): 50–101.Google Scholar