The Children's Culture Reader

by Jenkins, Henry

• ISBN13: 9780814742327
• ISBN10: 0814742327
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780814743454
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-08-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

Every major political and social dispute of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children, from the economic reforms of the progressive era through the social readjustments of civil rights era and on to the current explosion of anxieties about everything from the national debt to the digital revolution. Far from noncombatants whom we seek to protect from the contamination posed by adult knowledge, children form the very basis on which we fight over the nature and values of our society, and over our hopes and fears for the future.Unfortunately, our understanding of childhood and children has not kept pace with their crucial and rapidly changing roles in our culture. Pulling together a range of different thinkers who have rethought the myths of childhood innocence,The Children's Culture Readerdevelops a profile of children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them. Representing a range of thinking from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literature, and media studies,The Children's Culture Readerfocuses on issues of parent-child relations, child labor, education, play, and especially the relationship of children to mass media and consumer culture. The contributors include Martha Wolfenstein, Philippe Aries, Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Lynn Spigel, Valerie Walkerdine, Ellen Seiter, Annette Kuhn, Eve Sedgwick, Henry Giroux, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.Including a groundbreaking introduction by the editor and a sourcebook section which excerpts a range of material from popular magazines to child rearing guides from the past 75 years,The Children's Culture Readerwill propel our understanding of children and childhood into the next century.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Childhood Innocence and Other Modern Myths	p. 1
Childhood Innocence
From Immodesty to Innocence	p. 41
The Case of Peter Pan: The Impossibility of Children's Fiction	p. 58
Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood	p. 67
From Useful to Useless: Moral Conflict over Child Labor	p. 81
The Making of Children's Culture	p. 95
Seducing the Innocent: Childhood and Television in Postwar America	p. 110
Unlearning Black and White: Race, Media, and the Classroom	p. 136
The New Childhood: Home Alone As a Way of Life	p. 159
Child Abuse and the Unconscious in American Popular Culture	p. 178
Childhood Sexuality
Fun Morality: An Analysis of Recent American Child-Training Literature	p. 199
The Sensuous Child: Benjamin Spock and the Sexual Revolution	p. 209
How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay	p. 231
Producing Erotic Children	p. 241
Popular Culture and the Eroticization of Little Girls	p. 254
Stealing Innocence: The Politics of Child Beauty Pageants	p. 265
A Credit to Her Mother	p. 283
Child's Play
Children's Desires/Mothers' Dilemmas: The Social Contexts of Consumption	p. 297
Boys and Girls Together ... But Mostly Apart	p. 318
Boy Culture	p. 337
The Politics of Dollhood in Nineteenth-Century America	p. 363
Older Heads on Younger Bodies	p. 382
Confections, Concoctions, and Conceptions	p. 394
Living in a World of Words	p. 406
The Tidy House	p. 431
Sourcebook
Introduction	p. 456
Reaching Juvenile Markets	p. 459
Does Your "Research" Embrace the Boy of Today?	p. 462
"Selling" Food to Children	p. 463
The Family in Crisis	p. 468
After the Family - What?	p. 469
Against the Threat of Mother Love	p. 470
Children at War	p. 476
Children in Wartime: Parents' Questions	p. 477
You Are Citizen Soldiers	p. 480
Raise Your Boy to Be a Soldier	p. 483
Popular Culture and the Family	p. 485
"Such Trivia As Comic Books"	p. 486
The Play's the Thing	p. 493
Freedom and Responsibility	p. 496
New Parents for Old	p. 497
Families and the World Outside	p. 499
Time Bombs in Our Homes	p. 501
Democratic and Autocratic Child Rearing	p. 503
The Permissive Family	p. 507
The Contemporary Mother and Father	p. 508
The New Oedipal Drama of the Permissive Family	p. 510
The Modern Pediocracy	p. 512
Contributors	p. 515
Permissions	p. 518
Index	p. 523
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.