Growing Up in France
Growing Up in France
$45.00
USDHow did French people write about their own childhood and youth between the 1760s and the 1930s? Colin Heywood argues that this was a critical period in the history of young people, as successive generations moved from the relatively stable and hierarchical society of the Ancien Régime to a more fluid one produced by the industrial and democratic revolutions of the period. The main sources he uses are first-hand accounts of growing up: letters, diaries, childhood reminiscences and autobiographies. The book's first section considers cultural constructions of childhood and adolescence, and representations of growing up. The second considers the process of growing up among family and friends, the third the experience of moving out into the wider world, via education, work, political activity and marriage. This unique account will appeal to historians of childhood and adolescence, as well as social and cultural historians.
- A groundbreaking contribution to the history of childhood, a growing field of study
- Uses first-hand sources like letters, diaries, childhood reminiscences and autobiographies
- Will appeal to scholars working in modern European history, the history of childhood and youth, as well as scholars of childhood and youth across sociology, social studies and education studies
Reviews & endorsements
"Heywood eschews overgeneralizations about childhood in France and instead provides readers with a great diversity of childhood experiences varying by class, gender, regions of France, and even according to individual family dynamics. He allows us to understand better what growing up meant to the children of France."
-Rachel G. Fuchs, Arizona State University, American Historical Review
"Colin Heywood’s new study is a major contribution to a reorientation of the historiography of childhood.... By concentrating on how children felt about their experiences, Heywood has clearly made an enduring contribution not just to the historiography of childhood but also to a field that I would like to see receive more attention: the history of emotions." -H-Net, Anne Rose
"...a wide-ranging, broadly researched, and learned book that innovates by encompassing childhood and adolescence, which are usually treated separately by historians, and marrying adult ideas with youthful experiences. Heywood's analysis is admirably sensitive to the importance of gender, socioeconomic background, geographic locations, and religion in shaping of young lives...a study of considerable importance for French historians, social historians, and historians of childhood and youth." --Canadian Journal of History
"The book will serve as an excellent introduction to important aspects of growing up between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, while specialists will find it an interesting model for how to examine broad processes of social and cultural change at the individual level."
The Historian, Christopher R. Corley, Minnesota State University- Mankato
Product details
November 2009Paperback
9780521123112
328 pages
229 × 152 × 19 mm
0.48kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Representations of Childhood and Adolescence in France:
- 1. 'Ego documents' and the French historian in the twenty-first century
- 2. Into the limelight: new conceptions of childhood and adolescence
- 3. Growing up in theory and in practice
- 4. Turning points in a life: the autobiographical model
- Part II. Growing Up Among Family and Friends:
- 5. The demographic context: family forms in modern France
- 6. Of mothers and motherhood
- 7. Of fathers, fatherhood, kin and discipline
- 8. 'Small memories' from childhood
- 9. The society of children and youth
- Part III. Moving Towards Adulthood:
- 10. School, apprenticeship and work
- 11. A 'long' childhood in the secondary schools
- 12. Into 'adult' territory: sex, politics and religion
- Conclusion
- Bibliography.
