Harvey J. Graff's "Conflicting Paths: Growing up in America" is a highly involved book that addresses, in depth, the changing historical views of what childhood, adolescence, and youth must have been like in America during its earlier centuries. It discusses in detail the years between the signing of Declaration of Independence and the Great Depression, by dividing the book into four parts: The latter half of the 1700s to the early 1800s, the early 1800s to the middle of the century, the mid-1800s to the early 20th century, and the 1890s to the 1920s. In each period Graff provides "principle paths" that the majority of young people's childhood fell within, which helps him to create a pattern and means for comparison. Though not always clear due to Graff's seemingly longwinded writing style, this type of outline aids the reader in tying together and keeping track of his thought process. That said, the two sections that I found to be the most interesting were the first, dealing mostly in the 1700s, and the last, most closely connected to modern day childhoods.
"The Eighteenth Century" as Graff titles the first section in his book discusses childhood in early America following four "principle paths:" the Traditional, the Transitional, the Female, and the Emerging. In all of which, he goes into detail about what causes might have sent different children down each path and what some of the effects/characteristics are for children based upon which path their lives take. Although he uses a very similar break down to describe the next section of his book, I prefer this one because it seems so much simpler...before the emergence of increasingly ambiguous degrees and sub-catergories of Social status, things like childhood, though as Graff points out never easy, were much less complicated to understand and much easier to generalize. This point is made obvious by the number of first hand accounts Graff uses when describing each path in the 1700s versus those in the 1800s.
My reasoning for selecting the twentieth century as a point of interest differs greatly from that of my previous selection, because "simple" hardly describes the roaring twenties. What I found intrigued me the most about this time period was how it focused on the implementing of new social programs and its growing idea of adolescence. After sacrificing mere boys in the Civil War, Americans finally came to regard a lengthier period of familial dependence as nescessary.
I'm not sure that much of this book will help in my research on the progression of leisure activities in America's young women beween the mid twentieth century and present day, but I do think that its provided me with a solid knowlege base of what factors affect children and the paths they choose as well as given me a firm understanding of varying socioeconomic classes and their effects on youth.
In order to complete my project I will need to search book sales records, toy store sales records, as well as perform first hand oral interviews from children of the past all the way up to today's youth.
