ABSTRACT
US historian Steven Mintz stresses how much more capable, adaptable and resilient children are than is often assumed by society today:
Historically the young have been exposed to the stresses of child labour, neglect, and malnutrition. African-American children lived in slavery, history’s most extreme form of dehumanisation and exploitation, followed by nearly a century of de jure and de facto discrimination. Past experience places contemporary problems of childhood and adolescence in proper perspective.
