American 19th Century Children’s Periodical

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Story Summary
19th Century Gender Roles
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Children’s periodicals reflect the narratives and the social environment of their era and teach the youth important messages about life. The article for this summary was published in the journal “The Youth Companion” in 1831 (Leslie 110). This magazine is one of the most well-known and enduring American children’s publications. Early in the century, “The Youth Companion” was intended to edify—and very seldom to entertain. This is why articles such as “Lucy Nelson, The Boy-Girl” from this periodical source are valuable sources of information about the messages conveyed to children during the 19th century.

One of the stories published in the “Youth Companion” is a story that reveals the approach to gender identification during the 19th century. Evidently, the perceptions of gender and its manifestation in one’s appearance and self-expression differed in the 19th century, and the story “Lucy Nelson, The Boy-Girl” by Leslie Nelson reflects this idea clearly (110). Gender roles were more clearly defined during the 19th century, and children were expected to act in accordance with the social standards set for their gender.

Story Summary

This section will provide a brief summary of “Leslie Nelson, the Boy-Girl” by Leslie Nelson, published in “The Youth Companion.” The main character of this story is Lucy Nelson, who never seemed to like any girlish activities and always preferred playing with boys (Nelson 110). She had little interest in dressing dolls, cooking elaborate meals, or reading aloud to her sisters; instead, she preferred to spend all of her playtimes with her brothers. She enjoyed racing through the fields and wading through the water with the boys and was skilled enough to fly a kite and do other activities that were attributed to boys (Nelson, 110). Her shoes were always coated in dirt, her clothes were ripped to shreds from climbing trees and fences, and her complexion was so sunburned that she practically looked like an Indian child. Thus, both Leslie’s appearance and her hobbies differed from those of a typical girl living in the 19th century.

Lucy’s appearance clearly indicated that she had no interest in looking pretty, and instead, she wanted to engage in her hobbies. Her clothing was destroyed as a result of climbing trees and fences. The parents of Lucy Nelson compelled her to wear boy’s clothing for a month and prevented her from playing with her brothers in the lumber yard (Nelson, 111). At the end of this story, Mrs. Nelson, Lucy Halford’s mother, gave her a wonderful white dress to wear and escorted her downstairs to the parlor. Lucy made a resolute decision to control her passion for romping and boyish activities (Nelson 110). She was in danger of relapsing multiple times, but she was determined to succeed. Thus, due to family and social pressure, Lucy decided to change her boyish nature and act in accordance with expectations for girls.

19th Century Gender Roles

As shown in the summary of the children’s periodical above, the gender roles and expectations for children in the 19th century were very strict. Due to conflicts with prevalent religious and social beliefs, ideologies, and concepts of morality, the nineteenth century is frequently seen as a time when gender and sexuality were less expressed and explored (Mintz, 10). As the roles for women in public and professional life grew in the 19th century, there was a beginning of a change in perspective on gender. Still, Lucy Nelson’s story shows that parents expected their female children to dress a certain way and have specific interests deemed suitable for women.

Mintz, in his book “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood,” discusses the historical context in which American children have grown up over the years. Childhood in America has been both exciting and terrifying, like Huck’s raft; hence, the name of the book (Mintz 10). Children have taken their own routes to development and expression while adults have anguished over rearing children for more than three centuries. Mintz provides the readers with the first thorough history of American childhood, covering both the turbulent formative years of the kid and the adult.

Mintz charts the evolution of children from the sinful beings viewed by Puritans to the productive employees of nineteenth-century farms and factories. He also discusses the cosseted cherubs of the Victorian age to the self-assured consumers of their own, underscoring variability over time and across geographies (Mintz 30). It is fascinating to read how the view of children and their roles, as well as behaviors expected from them, have changed over the centuries. Mintz examines how they contributed to the contemporary welfare state, westward migration, economic development, and wartime mobilization (40). He acknowledges the freedom children formerly had to explore their world and themselves while simultaneously revealing the terrible reality of children’s lives throughout history, such as the hardships of physical labor, the worry about developing chronic illnesses, and the grief of untimely death.

Generations of Americans have faced incredibly challenging obstacles as they made the journey from childhood to adulthood, whether at work or play, at home or at school. Today, despite the growing influence of the media and consumer culture, adults place ever-increasing demands on children regarding self-discipline, cognitive growth, and academic accomplishment (Mintz 10). This process began during the nineteenth century when the view of children and their role in a family began to change. Mintz revisits an alternative to the goal-driven reality of modern youth with a view of the past (10). This book offers a picture of childhood that embraces risk and freedom, similar to the daring voyage on Huck’s raft—and is an odyssey of psychological self-discovery and progress.

Midway through the eighteenth century, the roots of modern childhood, in which adults seek to define childhood as a protected state, began to emerge. This is also shown in Nelson’s story, where Lucy’s parents try to make her conform to social standards. The decrease began in the late nineteenth century and reached its peak after the ideal of a safe upbringing for all children was almost realized by the middle of the twentieth century. The recent past is characterized by a marketed children’s culture and a series of out-of-proportion parental panics on the actual risk to children. During premodern childhood, which approximately corresponds to the colonial era, parents viewed their children as future adults. Midway through the eighteenth century, the roots of modern childhood, in which adults seek to define childhood as a protected state, were sown (Mintz 30). Two centuries later, childhood had come to be defined across the range of class and race. However, post-modern childhood, which saw the breakdown of gender roles, family structure, and authority beginning in the 1950s, was already posing a challenge to it (Mintz 30). The issue is that many believe that post-modern childhood represents a fundamental deterioration from the advantages of modern childhood.

Mintz’s main point is that diversity is more important than growth or decline. Gender, religion, ethnicity, geography, demography, and chronology are all included in the diversity. However, Mintz places the most emphasis on the diversity of the class. According to Mintz, it is “the most important factor of children’s well-being” and probably always has been (9). Additionally, childhood during the 19th century was also more difficult when compared to the childhood of individuals nowadays. Mintz cites the two million slave children on the eve of the Civil War, the 100,000 children who spent their childhoods in one of the 1,200 orphanages in the 1900s, and the 30,000 Native American children who attended boarding schools (25). Many of these children’s conditions may be attributed to their ethnicity, but what they all shared was poverty, which brought with it powerlessness, which was passed down from parents to children.

Conclusion

One of the stories included in the 1931 edition of the “Youth Companion” illustrates how people viewed gender identity in the 19th century. Many people believe that gender and sexuality were less explored in the 19th century. A shift in thinking about gender occurred in the 19th century as positions for women in public and professional life expanded. Also, the first comprehensive history of American childhood is provided in Steven Mintz’s “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood.”

Works Cited

Leslie, Nelson. “Lucy Nelson, The Boy-girl”, The Youth Companion, 1831, pp. 101-111. Web.

Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. ‎Belknap Press, 2006.

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American 19th Century Children’s Periodical

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