Pricing the Priceless Child

by Zelizer, Viviana A.

• ISBN13: 9780691034591
• ISBN10: 0691034591
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-08-08
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In this landmark book, sociologist Viviana Zelizer traces the emergence of the modern child, at once economically "useless" and emotionally "priceless," from the late 1800s to the 1930s. Having established laws removing many children from the marketplace, turn-of-the-century America was discovering new, sentimental criteria to determine a child's monetary worth. The heightened emotional status of children resulted, for example, in the legal justification of children's life insurance policies and in large damages awarded by courts to their parents in the event of death. A vivid account of changing attitudes toward children, this book dramatically illustrates the limits of economic views of life that ignore the pervasive role of social, cultural, emotional, and moral factors in our marketplace world.

Table of Contents

PREFACE (1994)	ix	(6)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xv
Introduction	3	(19)
1 From Mobs to Memorials: The Sacralization of Child Life	22	(34)
2 From Useful to Useless: Moral Conflict Over Child Labor	56	(17)
3 From Child Labor to Child Work: Redefining the Economic World of Children	73	(40)
4 From a Proper Burial to a Proper Education: The Case of Children's Insurance	113	(25)
5 From Wrongful Death to Wrongful Birth: The Changing Legal Evaluation of Children	138	(31)
6 From Baby Farms to Black-Market Babies: The Changing Market for Children	169	(39)
7 From Useful to Useless and Back to Useful? Emerging Patterns in the Valuation of Children	208	(21)
NOTES	229	(38)
INDEX	267