PROBLEMS AND PROMISES - COLONIAL AMERICAN CHILD-REARING AND MODERNIZATION THEORY

This article critically reviews some of the most important literature of the East twenty-five years on the topic of colonial American child rearing and considers the implications of this work for modernization theory. This literature has pointed out serious difficulties with mode rnization theory, most important it has demonstrated a diversity of co lonial experience that undermines the ideal-type framework of this the ory. Yet some insight might be salvaged from the thought of modernizat ion theorists and the classical sociologists upon whose ideas they dre w. While the colonial social landscape varied highly, there were also important similarities that characterized American transitions from re gion to region. This article concentrates on one central tendency with in American society, the growing prerogatives given to the individual over the collective. As this trend gained expression within the practi ce of child rearing, children's sense of self was increasingly severed from the community at large.