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Childhood
2 articles on Childhood
Childhood
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 7856 Includes: From Africa to North America | Becoming African Americans | African American Childhoods | Black Families and Parent-Child Relationships | Workplace | Educational Opportunities | Abolition | Civil War and Reconstruction | BibliographyThe reconstruction of childhood as experienced by black girls and boys in early America is vastly instructive. Much can be told about the lives of children who were kidnapped in Africa, transported across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold in the Americas, and who survived to join labor forces, marry shipmates, form families, and create a lasting culture. Girls and boys under eighteen years of age constituted a significant portion—an estimated 25 to 33 percent—of the more than 10 million Africans transported to the Americas between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The majority of them had been born in West Africa and had previously spent their days performing simple chores, such as chasing birds from fields of grain, carrying water, and gathering kindling for their own families or for persons who owned them. ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
Word Count: 5621 Includes: Black Girls in Early America | Growth and Status of the Black Population | The Slave Era | Girls in the Workplace | The Sexual Abuse of Girls | Resistance to Bondage | The Quest for Fundamental Rights | Discrimination and Stereotypes | Toward the Future | BibliographyA variable social construction, the concept of childhood barely existed in early America. In fact, this special period of growth and development experienced before accepting adult responsibilities was not an entrenched American institution until the twentieth century. The time at which this protected segment of the lifecycle ends is debatable. Some scholars and public officials have used twelve as the cutoff while others set it at age sixteen or eighteen. Still others claim childhood lasts until twenty-one years of age.Age limits aside, other factors, including color, class, status, and the embracing shield of loved ones, are significant in determining if girls enjoy a protected period in their formative years. There are also concerns about their psychological well-being and freedom from emotional devastation, which may mature girls beyond their chronological years. ...
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