HSY2380

Desire and protection: childhood and society 1780 to the present

Barbara Caine and Esther Faye

8 points
* One 1-hour lecture and one 2-hour seminar per week
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives Students successfully undertaking this subject should have gained an understanding of concepts such as `the child', `the family', `childhood', `adolescent', `sexuality', `masculinity', `femininity' and of their changing meaning over this period. Students should also have gained an understanding of comparative history, and a knowledge of the significant recent historical and theoretical literature on the history of childhood.

Synopsis This subject will explore the growing concern with childhood over the past two centuries. It will look at changing definitions of childhood and family as new ideas about `mothering' and `fathering' came to the fore, as `childhood' became the central concern of psychology and psychoanalysis and as the concept of `adolescence' as a special stage of life emerged. It will also explore the ways in which childhood was eroticized and protected as children became the focus of great social, medical and familial concern. The different kinds of families that emerged in different social and ethnic groups, the attempts to regulate family life through social policy and legislation, will also be discussed.

Assessment Seminar discussion (10 minutes): 10%
* Tutorial paper (1500 words): 25%
* Essay selected from essay list (3000 words): 35%
* Examination (1.5 hours): 30%

Preliminary reading

Grimshaw P, McConville C and McEwen E (eds) Families in colonial Australia 1985
Gutman H The black family in slavery and freedom 1976
Johnson L The modern girl: Girlhood and growing up in the fifties 1993
Jones J Labor of love, labor of sorrow: Black women, work, and the family from slavery to the present 1985
Kociumbas J Australian childhood: A history 1996
Mintz S and Kellogg S Domestic revolutions: A social history of American life 1988
Reiger K M The disenchantment of the home: Modernizing the Australian family, 1880-1940 OUP, 1985
Roberts E Women and families: An oral history 1940-1970 OUP, 1995
Sommerville C J The rise and fall of childhood 1990
Zelizer V A Pricing the priceless child: The changing value of children 1985