The Erosion of Childhood

The Erosion of Childhooddiscusses the changing status of children from the mid-Victorian period to the end of World War I. The author emphasizes that their status was as objects to be used and abused, rather than as people with personalities in their own right. The book looks at the exploitation of children in the worlds of work, school, and home. Lionel Rose shows how conditions improved over time, but expresses an underlying cynicism about the reasons for this improvement. Technological advances displaced children from some trades, so that mandatory schooling became the only alternative to the perceived menace of youths idling on the streets. Schools were corrals where children learned by rote their often meaningless lessons, and teachers' earnings were related to exam scores ("payment by result"). Such methods aimed only to make the child more "civilized"--good factory fodder. In the last section, Rose compares the home life of the working-class child with thatof his middle-class counterpart and finds that they both suffered, but in different ways. While the former was expected to contribute to the family income from an early age, the latter was segregated from parents in the nursery and boarding school, and subject to a highly structured upbringing.