Is this the end of childhood? A few stories in the news this week made me reflect on how much American childhood seems to be returning to childhoods of the past. First, the sad passing of Hayden Panettiere made me reflect on the wages of ambition. Second, the news that Trump preferred decorating and hanging out with Natalie Harp makes me wonder how control continues to frame womanhood. And finally, the Republican desire to keep child marriage on the books reminds me that the desire to maintain control of girls runs deep in our national ethos.
Historians often talk about how childhood is a fairly recent construct arising from the Victorian transformation of families. Of course, for the Victorians, childhood was something only the wealthy had. In the 19th century, wealthy children could enjoy it; everyone else in the world was expected to work. Where would you find those tiny little hands that make factory work fast?
Many things that feel natural are, in fact, socially determined. While childhood has always been part of humanity, its responsibilities have changed considerably over the millennia. Ancient toys remind us that play was part of youth. But children would have been part of the family business. If your family made baskets, your childhood might involve preparing reeds.
While ancient royal or aristocratic children might marry young, it’s a fallacy to assume people of all classes married as children. This misconception comes from a misunderstanding of the lifespan data. Mortality was incredibly high for children until the 20th century. However, at many points in human history, if someone made it to 18, they were very likely to live a long time. The average lifespan was even higher for men. Historically, and even today, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is give birth. The lifespan impacted childhood in two different ways. First, many families of average means didn’t want to marry off a child for fear that dowry would be lost if the child died young. Second, families wanted to retain their daughters as long as possible before releasing them to another family, i.e., the loss of valuable labor within the workshop. While childhood looked different for much of history than it does today, it was still a moment for children to learn and to mature.
The real change in childhood in the broadest sense comes during the Progressive Era. In the 19th century, a small percentage of children saw a complete lifestyle of leisure with toys and Christmas presents and music lessons. In the United States, a larger percentage of children attended school, and they were educated to work in the growing labor market thanks to the Industrial Revolution. While factories increased production, they also still needed massive labor supplies. They were happy to employ children, and families needed everyone to earn a wage to make ends meet. But culturally, most families had probably worked since childhood. Working childhoods were their norm. The huge difference, however, was that in factories the children worked outside the structure of their families. Children did not have the watchful eye of a concerned parent or relative. Many children were physically, emotionally, and psychologically scarred while working for unscrupulous, unfeeling men in factories. So, if in the Gilded Age the few wealthy children had a golden childhood, in the Progressive Era families from all walks of life pushed for legislation to protect children. The exploitation of workers in the Gilded Age resulted in worker protections and restrictions on child labor.
While, on the whole, child labor decreased considerably in the US, the entertainment industry lagged behind the factories in terms of protecting children. Almost every part of the entertainment industry where there is now a protection was because a child had been harmed. Well into the 21st century, many children had to take their parents to court over the mismanagement of their earnings. Exactly 15% of all gross earnings must go straight into the blocked trust called a Coogan account, named for Jackie Coogan, whose parents squandered his earnings. Safeguards like having chaperones or ensuring they retain educators to continue their studies were hard-won. Many child actors have suffered for the profit of adults.
Panettiere’s story is sad on many levels. Having watched her grow up on camera, I can’t help but feel that her parents sacrificed her childhood. Her promise was squandered because she had no adult to help her when she needed it. While she had money from her work, her parents seem to have offered no protection from predatory men. She was exposed to drugs and sex without regard for her mental health. She was set adrift in a world of predatory men, in a system where men have all the power, on a raft by herself. Alone with predators, she had little choice but to become prey. Talent should not be a life sentence in despair because the adults around you had more greed than sense. Her death is a damning point about how systems eat individuals. We cannot look at her as such a sad case. Instead, we need to understand that anyone in such a system can break.
Panettiere’s story potentially plays out on so many phones around the world. But the 21st century has seen an explosion in families exploiting their young children for profit. Many parents support their whole families through Vlogs or social media channels. The first of those family bloggers is coming of age, and the lives they led seem grim. In a sense, they are no different from the ancient families in which the children did the Work the parents did. But the massive difference is the Panopticon: our algorithmic social media. How many children who worked in their parents' workshops have been forgotten? And for those children, a clear path to adulthood was given by watching their parents work. For their social media influencers, they are pioneers, but the new worlds they explore can take their children to some very dark places against their consent. The fact that so many children’s images are sexualized online seems like this is something that should be outlawed. California has moved to change its legislation around children online. Many of those parents have moved to more lenient states rather than give up the profit for their child's sake.
In many of these cases, family bloggers are from religious backgrounds and claim to be focused on family values; this is not unlike Republicans who claim to be about family values and regularly vote against protecting children from child marriage. As I’ve written before when I was discussing baby doll dresses, there’s an interesting conceit in American Christianity. While the national ethos was partly constructed through the white Anglo-Saxon protestants of the Northeast, they understood the efficacy of allowing more evangelical forms of Protestantism to permeate rural areas. Child marriage was something that was common in these communities. Young girls were more amenable to marrying older men when they had no choice. Older men liked pliable young wives. Additionally, since childbearing was deadly, husbands regularly got older, while their (new) wives stayed the same age. Legislators largely avoided passing anything that would anger these consistent voting blocks. Basically, the law did not protect the children, but protected the elected officials' jobs. And that remains true in terms of legislation about child marriage.
But the issue of religiosity and child labor also comes to the fore when we talk about Natalie Harp. Under the Desk News did a deep dive into Harp’s childhood, and, not surprisingly, she came from a high-control, faith-based family, in which child labor was part of her upbringing. Her mission was very similar to that of a lot of family bloggers. She’s meant to focus on American Exceptionalism for the good of their souls. In high-control environments, if you cede all thought, you will never have anything unpleasant inside those minds. As with anybody who has very little training to think for themselves, Natalie Harp happily knows how to follow the leader.
This goes back to my original question. Why is childhood becoming so contested? Many children in high-control faith work in the family business of inculcating others into their cult for all their lives. The Trump children have worked in his business of fleecing shareholders, and now the nation, for their whole lives. Show business kids often work before they even understand what TV is. Our screens are filled with nepobabies. (These nepo kids are different from the Hayden variety, whose parents were not successful and so had to put in the hours to support the family. The Nepo babies are the children of successful stars who then get an easy pass to do something similar, if not quite on par with their parents' stellar success.)
In all of this, we should see, in hereditary work, a decrease in the conception of childhood as a time to foster your own interests. The family sacrifices childhood to preserve skills and wealth. As I said about historic childhood, children worked in the family industry so that those skills were retained within the family. For example, by keeping their Christian children within Christian jobs, they are conserving those ideas. When the path is controlled, how can the child be their best self?
What we lose when we lose childhood is not only the child's autonomy to choose their future, but also our society's ability to find the best jobs. If you watched “The West Wing”, you might remember the role of Charlie, who was the bag man to the president. Looking back, the show is incredibly fantastical and unnecessarily laudatory of our elected officials, but it does give a sense of what an ideal right-hand person to the president might be. Given that Natalie Harp is, proportionally, the person who posted the disgusting meme of Obama as a monkey, the reported $150,000 of taxpayer money she earns seems excessive and inappropriate. If the best person had been hired for the job, well, they wouldn’t work for Trump.
That’s actually the essence of why we need to remember the value of childhood. In systems that grow, expand, and encourage people to be their best, we all benefit. The other attack on childhood is education, as I’ve discussed. By turning higher education into job training, our children are tracked, automaton-like, into slaving for the upper echelons. We end up with a society unchanged from the current status quo. Childhood is an investment in our future. The only people who push against that are those who favor short-sighted gain and have no care for society at large or the plight of the children in their care.
