Australian Childhood: A HistoryThis is a complete history of the experience of childhood in Australia. It explores changing patterns of child-rearing and schooling, the care of children, their games, toys and leisure, their work, distinctions based on class, gender and race. It deals with child poverty and health through history, and changing adult perceptions of childhood and adolescence. It is a readable social history of the hcild which also fills a gap in Australian historiography. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 21 | |
nativeborn children of convicts | 38 |
children of the colonial elite | 55 |
ix | 70 |
middleclass domestic ideology | 91 |
the street the factory | 112 |
medicalising middleclass childhood | 130 |
doctors psychologists and the unfit child | 148 |
childhood mass culture | 172 |
Decolonising childhood | 194 |
Infantilising adolescence | 216 |
Endnotes | 235 |
Common terms and phrases
1st edn Aboriginal children adolescent adult Allen & Unwin anthropometric arrived Asylum Australian baby baby-farming became birth bodgies and widgies boys Brian Lewis Britain British bush Catholic century child labour child-rearing childhood clothes colonies consumerism convict culture Diemen's Land discipline disease doctors domestic early England especially experience factory families father female feminist foster Gandevia growing Health History household ideal immigrant incarceration infant innocence institutions juvenile Kociumbas 1983 larrikin living London male marriage Mathinna Melbourne mental middle-class missionaries moral mothers native-born numbers older organisations parents Parramatta pastoralists political poor population punishment Queensland recalled reformers Report Ringwood role rural servants settlers sexual social Society South Australia South Wales street Sydney Tasmania teachers teenage theorists urban Van Diemen's Land Victoria Western Australia women and girls working-class young younger youth
Popular passages
Page 96 - Blessings on the hand of woman! angels guard its strength and grace, In the palace, cottage, hovel, oh, no matter where the place! Would that never storms assailed it, rainbows ever gently curled; For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.
Page 51 - WHY should I join with those in play In whom I've no delight; Who curse and swear, but never pray; Who call ill names, and fight?
Page 239 - The Female World of Love and Ritual : Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1, no.
Page 47 - ... (rough pieces of split timber, set on end, like a strong paling), and thatched, and which, if plastered with mud, would be weather-proof and comfortable ; but, for the most part, the slabs are all falling asunder, the thatch half torn off, the window, or rather the place for one, stopped with pieces of wood, hides, and old rags ; and the door, without hinges, inclining against the wall. A heap of ashes and chips usually lies in front ; broken bottles, old casks, old rags, bones, and shoes, and...
Page 38 - The natives (not the Aborigines, but the 'currency', as they are termed, in distinction from the 'sterling', or British-born residents) are often very good-looking when young; but precocity of growth and premature decay are unfortunately characteristic of the greater portion. The children are mostly pale and slight, though healthy, with very light hair and eyes — at least such is their general appearance, with of course many exceptions. They grow up tall; the girls often very pretty and delicatelooking...
Page 1 - Where are my first-born, said the brown land, sighing; They came out of my womb long, long ago. They were formed of my dust — why, why are they crying And the light of their being barely aglow?
Page xi - I have a holy horror of babies, to whatever nationality they may belong; but for general objectionableness I believe there are none to compare with the Australian baby.
Page 52 - Your milk-boy sets his can down, in open day, for the vegetable lad to have ' only just one ball' at it with a turnip; and old women are continually seen scolding and threatening because their legs have, quite accidentally of course, been treated as a set of stumps. One of the peculiarities of Sydney is the multitude of its gay equipages. In an English provincial town the handsome barouche or chariot rolling down the main street attracts a certain degree of attention.
Page 38 - The natives (not the aborigines, but the " currency," as they are termed, in distinction from the " sterling," or British-born residents) are often very good-looking when young ; but precocity of growth and premature decay are unfortunately characteristic of the greater portion. The children are mostly pale and slight, though healthy, with very light hair and eyes — at least such is their general appearance, with of course many exceptions. They grow up tall ; the girls often very pretty and delicate-looking...
Page 240 - A Mother's Offering to her Children by a Lady long Resident in New South Wales...