Description:
The collection of ideas, values, and beliefs known as the Enlightenment fundamentally altered the ways in which the family was understood. During this period (1650-1800), traditional family roles were rethought, questioning much which had been taken for granted, such as the innate nature of children. At the same time, the Enlightenment also reinforced many long-held notions, applying new ideas to perpetuate assumptions about gender and race.
The commercialization of agriculture, industrialization, and urbanization, as well as the opportunities presented by expanding education and the sale of domestic goods all impacted on the family. Further, the continuing expansion of Western empires, the ownership of slaves within American states, and the political turmoil of the American and French revolutions all helped to shape both the ideals and the experience of family life. A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays on family relationships, community, economy, geography and the environment, education, life cycle, the state, faith and religion, health and science, and world contexts.Brief description: James Marten (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is professor of history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and on children's history. He is the author of The Children's Civil War (1998), which was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice Magazine and chosen for the Jesuit National Book Award in 1999. He is also the editor of Children and War: An Historical Anthology (2002). He serves as director of the Children in Urban America Project, a NEH-funded online archive of documents related to the history of children in Milwaukee. Marten is a founding member and secretary-treasurer of the Society for the History of Children and Youth. In 1999 he was a Fulbright Lecturer at Northeast Normal University in Changchun, People's Republic of China.