Problems and Promises: Colonial American Child Rearing and Modernization Theory

Abstract

This article critically reviews some of the most important literature of the last twenty-five years on the topic of colonial American child rearing and considers the implications of this workfor modernization theory. This literature has pointed out serious diffculties with modernization theory, most important, it has demon strated a diversity of colonial experience that undermines the ideal-type frame work of this theory. Yet some insight might be salvaged from the thought of modernization theorists and the classical sociologists upon whose ideas they drew. While the colonial social landscape varied highly, there were also important similarities that characterized American transitions from region to region. This article concentrates on one central tendency within American society, the growing prerogatives given to the individual over the collective. As this trend gained expression within the practice of child rearing, children's sense of self was increasingly severed from the community at large.