Child-Rearing as a Form of American Knowledge

Abstract

H ow do parents know what children need as they grow and develop? This is an essential matter in every culture and a fundamental question of knowledge. In societies that are stable and deeply settled in one place, the answer is often taken for granted as one generation passes on its knowledge to the next. But the subject of child-rearing becomes much more self-conscious when people move to a very different place and at times of rapid change. In the past two hundred years, it has also become an area of philosophical and academic discussion, as children have become the subject of pediatric, pedagogical, and psychological inquiry and expert advice. When both change andmigration come together, as they have in the United States over the course of its history, then the question of child-rearing as a form of knowledge is often highlighted as important and sometimes becomes contentious. The subject of childrearing has the potential to expose the complex ways in which traditional knowledge and knowledge filtered through expertise intersect, and it raises important questions about how children act as intermediaries in the transmission of knowledge.