Two? Two and one-half? Thirty months? Chronometrical childhood in early twentieth century America

Child-rearing books and manuals from the early twentieth century indicate t hat pediatricians and developmental psychologists were prone to divide the life course of children into increasingly precise chronometrical "stages," e.g., focusing on changes from one month to the next rather than one year t o another. Little is known, however, of whether parents also chronometrical ized their children's lives. Working with 206 advice-seeking letters writte n by fathers and mothers in the 1920s and 1930s to nationally known educato r and author Angelo Patri (1876-1965), we develop a text-based measure of " chronometrical childhood," employ it in a multivariate analysis, and find t hat an urban environment heightened parents' tendencies toward chronometric ity, while the financial strain of the Great Depression did just the opposi te. Our results show how age can be viewed as a social construction, subjec t to the influence of ideology and economics, and that the scheduling of ch ildren's lives can vary in different locates and at different historical mo ments.