In 1928, Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on fieldwork she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa. In 1925, Mead observed, interviewed, and interacted with 68 girls between the ages of 9… [more]
Written and illustrated by German painter and poet, Wilhelm Busch, Max und Moritz (1865) is a children's story written in doggerel verse and illustrated in a comic-like style about two unscrupulous boys who taunt adults with their… [more]
The chart shows the proportion of male and female child laborers between the ages of 5 and 14 who are engaged in domestic work for third-party households. As the note on the chart indicates, only those countries in the data sample of 16 nations… [more]
The chart shows summative data for several world regions and types of countries on the subject of child labor. The figures refer to the percentage of children 5-14 years of age involved in child labor, meaning as a percentage of the total… [more]
Published around 1853, Little Eva, The Flower of the South is an anonymously written children's story based on Eva, the enormously popular character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Aiming… [more]
This engraving was included in the 1705 edition of Robert Beverley's The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts. A similar engraving had appeared in Thomas Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of… [more]
In 17th-century New England, Puritan beliefs about "infant depravity" (born with "original sin") generated anxieties about "eternal damnation" that shaped methods of childrearing and notions of death. Puritan beliefs can be "read" on the… [more]
During the modern Imperial period (1868-1945), daughters of poor Japanese families worked as komori taking care of their own siblings or working as indentured servants for other poor families. The state's efforts to foster Japanese… [more]
Whether known as Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Babbo Natale, Christkind, Père Noël, Santa Claus ("Santa") or by many other names, this legendary gift-giver in European folklore and hagiography is well known around… [more]
Strongly influencing the invention of Robert J. Clay's mechanized "Creeping Baby Doll" in 1871, were changing notions of childhood that fostered children's development.
Allowing babies to crawl on all fours as did Clay's doll reflected… [more]