Description
Book SynopsisIn the final decades of the nineteenth century, the French Third Republic attempted to carve out childhood as a distinct legal and social category. Previously, working-class girls and boys had labored and trained alongside adults. Concerned about future citizens, lawmakers expanded access to education, regulated child labor, and developed child welfare programs. They directed working-class youths to age-segregated spaces, such as vocational schools or juvenile prisons. With these policies, they distinguished the youthful worker from the adult worker and the juvenile delinquent from the adult criminal. Through their emphasis on age, these policies defined childhood as a universal stage of life. And yet, they also reproduced inequalities in the experience of childhood.In An Age to Work, Miranda Sachs considers the role of the welfare state in reinforcing class and gender-based divisions within childhood. She argues that agents of the welfare state, such as child labor inspectors and soci
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Child Labor Legislation and the Regulation of Age Chapter 2: "An Apprenticeship for Life": Training the Republican Worker Chapter 3: Creating the Juvenile Delinquent Chapter 4: "An Insurmountable Distaste for Work": Juvenile Delinquents in the Archives Chapter 5: Blurred Spaces: Working-Class Girlhood Chapter 6: "The Collaboration of the Crowd": Age and Identity in Working-Class Neighborhoods Chapter 7: Interwar Reform Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
