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Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America. - book reviews

Journal of Social History, Spring, 1997 by Sigurour Gylfi Magnusson

This is an unusually rich and imaginative scholarly work which belongs to the steadily growing field of the history of childhood and adolescence. Professor Graff answers the call of those scholars who have urged that more attention be paid to the subjective experience of those who are growing up. This has heretofore been considered a nearly impossible task, because in the past children have traditionally left few traces of their lives. In general, it has been assumed that they have followed in the paths marked out for them by adults, and the possibility that they developed their own reactions and behavior in the course of their maturation has been ignored. Thus, scholars have generally studied the institutions surrounding children's lives and the influence of adults upon the formation of these institutions. In other words, we know a lot about "normative" behavior, but little or nothing about the actual behavior, of children and adolescents in America and elsewhere. The handful of studies which have attempted to throw light on the childhood experience have focused mostly upon urban late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century societies, using both autobiographies and oral histories as sources.

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The importance of a study which tries to map out the subjective experience of children is enormous. Here we get an opportunity to understand children's own perspectives on the process of growing up and how they dealt with their immediate environments. In fact, studies of this nature touch upon a variety of historical topics, such as the function of the family, the development of educational systems and the importance of work. A focus on the childhood experience rests on the theoretical assumption that the life course of children is an important barometer of continuity and change in any society.

In his attempt to follow the process of growing up in America, from the second half of the eighteenth century to our own time, Graff employs over five-hundred personal documents (first-person testimonial sources), including autobiographies, diaries, letters and memoirs. This database is extraordinary, given the difficulties presented by such sources for systematic historical research. Since the nature of the sources is "subjective," which for many scholars means irreconcilable with the requirements of historical research, Graff has put a lot of effort into the construction of the conceptual and theoretical framework which holds his research together.

In his first chapter, Graff reviews the various previously-made assumptions about childhood - "the rise and fall" mythology. He then chooses to emphasize instead the importance of integration, inclusion, conflict, and historical constructedness which characterize growing up. In exploring the historical experiences and transformation of children he uses three analytical tools: paths, conflicts, and experiences. "The history of growing up," argues Graff, "is a history of conflicts, of conflicting paths, as myriad indicators, including first-person testimonies, richly demonstrate." (p. 11) He also explores the difficulties which face histories of this kind:

Conflicts exist within the developing self in pursuit of the maturity and competence appropriate to its era and station; the dialectical dance of generations within and without the family; tradition and change. They confront developing institutions and expectations, as well as class, gender, race, geography, ethnicity, and age itself. They criss-cross and overlay other conflicts that stem from socialization, authority, morality, ideology, and historical circumstances. In personal as in social, cultural, economic, and political terms, growing up is a conflict-defined, conflict-ridden, and conflict-bound historical process. (p. 11)

This conflict-ridden process of growing up involves the complexity, fluidity, and multi-dimensional character of the individual person. By overlooking this important feature of growing up, scholars have tended to construct "mistaken dichotomies." Since children have to deal with expectations derived from their closest environment, with laws and regulations which are the foundation for formal institutions, and with their own maturation, they ultimately negotiate their way through the life course by moving along various kinds of paths. "The major focus of this book," Graff states, "is on the formation, experience, and transformation of the principal paths of growing up. . . . The concept of paths is a useful one for organizing and probing the mass of evidence provided by the testimonies." (p. 18) He focuses upon a fairly limited number of principal paths which combine "social-historical description, interpretation, and metaphor." (p. 20)

Graff divides the study into four periods and reconstructs the paths in connection with time and place. These paths are named in the study as "traditional," "transitional," "female," and later, "emergent." All of these paths have their own particular routes which further divide the experience of growing up from one point in time to another. Missing from the study are certain other common paths: in particular, those of "servants, especially women; poor and working people, both rural and urban; African Americans; and native peoples." (p. 29) This stems from the biases inherent in the first-person sources used.

Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America. - book reviews

Journal of Social History, Spring, 1997 by Sigurour Gylfi Magnusson

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