Synopses & Reviews
Review
"...undertakes an important and timely task--that of documenting and demonstrating the scientific utility of a newly emerging research model that unites social history and child development. The integration is a promising one that deserves to be brought to the attention of scholars and students not only within the two converging fields, but more generally within the behavioral and social sciences." Urie Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University"What fun....These papers show that cross-disciplinary research, difficult though it may be, can be extraordinarily fruitful." Frances K. Goldscheider, Contemporary Sociology"The contributors...provide us with not only some substantive results of their efforts but also a narrative of the process itself...they argue that collaboration with historians and use of historical evidence will allow developmentalists to test their assumptions regarding the invariance of developmental processes and to grasp more firmly what Emily Cahan and her co-authors call 'the elusive [invented] historical child.'" Kathleen W. Jones, Science"...the culmination of approximately six years of interdisciplinary work between social historians and developmental psychologists concerned with change across the lifespan...this is a thought-provoking book that should be influential...Children in Time and Place is of particular value as a set of attempts to empirically analyze historically situated human beings..." David Kritt, Mind, Culture and Activity"...both enlightening and stimulating. It is an excellent introduction to new interdisciplinary work that has enormous potential for contributing to the fields of developmental psychology, history, and sociology. The volume has an impressive scope and clearly demonstrates the promise and accomplishments of this kind of interdisciplinary collaboration, both conceptually and operationally." Paul Mussen, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley"Children in Time and Place should be helpful to graduate students, college seniors, or anyone embarking upon new research in history or psychology. The theoretical chapters provide good typologies and methodological suggestions, reviews and critiques of existing literature, and research questions." Barbara Beatty, History of Education Quarterly"This book should be read not for the new light it sheds on the history of childhood in the United States--although the reader is likely to find some valuable insights--but as a stimulating treatise on the prospects and value of linking social history and developmental psychology. The book's editors and authors are due great credit for the high level of theoretical sophistication that they bring to their discussion of the paradigms of both disciplines and their potential for better articulation." David I. Kertzer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"Children in Time and Place is an honest and stimulating description of an unusual in-depth experiment of mutual understanding and collaboration between developmental psychologists and social historians. If scientists from these two disciplines ever succeed in establishing a common interdisciplinary research tradition, which I prefer to label 'Historical Developmental Psychology,' then this book will become the classic source. The most important issues, essential to productively crossing the borders between developmental psychology and social history, are presented in this book." Willem Koops, International Journal of Behavioral Development
Synopsis
How do major historical events--such as war or the depression--influence children's development? This study brings together social historians and developmentalists to explore the implications of a changing society for children's growth and life changes.
Table of Contents
Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I. A Proposal: 1. Studying children in a changing world; Part II. Historical and Life transitions: 2. America's home front children in World War II; 3. Rising above life's disadvantage: from the Great Depression; 4. Child development and human diversity; Part III. Life Transitions Across Historical Time: 5. Problem girls: observations on past and present; 6. Continuity and change in symptom choice: anorexia; 7. Fathers and child rearing; Part IV. The Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: 8. The workshop enterprise; 9. The elusive historical child: ways of knowing the child of history and psychology; 10. A paradigm in question: commentary; 11. Epilogue; Bibliography; Author index; Subject index.