A History of Childhood in the United States

This book blows the lid off the sentimental mythology about protecting children and exposes the dark underbelly of adult ambition for the last four hundred years

The first book on the four hundred year formation of the US told from the perspective of children, Dr. Rollo argues that US history cannot be understood without recognizing how deeply it depended on the domination and exploitation of children. From the earliest settler colonies to modern schooling, children’s labor, obedience, and discipline were central to economic growth, political order, and nation-building. The United States was not only built on stolen land and enslaved labor, but also on the systematic use of children as workers, dependents, and instruments of adult ambition. Rollo observes how farms, factories, mines, and households relied on children’s labor, while myths of independence and self-reliance erased that dependence from national memory.

Divided into four separate parts, Rollo illustrates how as industrial capitalism expanded, competing adult groups—parents, industrialists, workers, and reformers—fought over control of children, each claiming to act in their and the nation’s interest. He compares the gentle, more nurturing methods of Indigenous child-rearing against the stern, disciplinarian tactics of settler colonists that later became the norm, and moves through time to touch on Black childhood during Reconstruction and the later Progressive Era “saving” of white children; compulsory schooling as a new way to discipline and prepare children for economic roles after the Industrial Era; the containment and classification of disabled children during the eugenics movement; and other topics all the way to today’s parental rights movements. In doing so, he highlights how our systems were profoundly shaped by race, with Black, Indigenous, immigrant, poor, and disabled children subjected to harsher control, exclusion, and violence.

Rollo documents that despite all these aggressions, children resisted exploitation and mistreatment through work slowdowns, strikes, defiance, and protest. From the 1836 mill girls strike in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the Newsboys’ Strike in 1899 in New York City, to the high school anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the increasing visibility of youth at the forefront of today’s environmental justice crusades, he documents their revolt and resilience from below and how today’s youth movements continue this tradition, challenging a society that professes to protect them, while sacrificing their futures. A History of Childhood in the United States blows the lid off the sentimental mythology we’ve imbibed about protecting children and exposes the dark underbelly of adult ambition.