The dilemma of children’s happiness

Children’s happiness has gained new attention, on a global level, in recent decades. Growing valuation of happiness for the young raises a number of interpretive problems, and can serve as a further introduction to the crucial analytical problems in the latest phase of world history. The happiness theme helps focus the discussion of changes between the contemporary period and the past, including the causes of change; it advances consideration of comparative issues amid the obvious importance, but also the limitations, of Western models; and, above all, it virtually compels further evaluation of the complex impact of new ideas on adults and children alike. There’s a lot we don’t know about happiness as a recent-historical aspect of childhood, but what we do know is provocative, and the additional questions we must ask are revealing as well. The first point is striking, but needs some immediate cautions: with a few

limited exceptions, traditional societies (certainly agricultural societies) did not systematically associate childhood with happiness. We have seen that, during the classical period, few of the adults who left written records of their lives looked back fondly on any aspect of their early years, except for an occasional nice word about their mother. Parents, for their part, felt no particular responsibility for making children happy. Making them obedient and diligent, yes; providing moral training, definitely; but happiness was not part of the equation. In some cases, as with Christian belief in original sin, particular cultural artifacts might expand the normal distance between thinking about childhood and contemplating happiness. Frequency of child death and the obvious need to make children work surely complicated any notions of happiness even more generally. But the cautions are important. The fact that childhood was not equated

with happiness does not mean that adults usually sought to make children unhappy. Some did (some do in modern societies), taking pleasure in children’s suffering. But there’s no reason to think most adults were deliberately abusive, and many took real pleasure in their children and in enjoyments that could be shared – despite the lack of an explicit happiness commitment. Furthermore, except under abuse, there’s no reason to think that children

themselves were necessarily particularly unhappy in traditional contexts. Surely they sometimes were, because of inferior status and work burdens in addition to the normal complexities of growing up. But children could often take pleasure in community festivals, and the extent to which they were left free to indulge in play, during non-work times, may actually have encouraged a certain amount of satisfaction. It’s the idea of happiness that was lacking. This situation began to change, in Western societies, in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries – precisely the point at which attention to happiness began to gain ground in other aspects of the culture. The Enlightenment expanded a positive valuation of happiness – this would show up, for example, in the American Declaration of Independence, with its reference to pursuit of same, along with life and liberty. As older ideas of original sin began slowly to decline in some Christian groups, a door was opened to rethinking how children might be treated. Later on, with the demographic transition, the decline in children’s death rates reduced a huge barrier to adult commitment to thinking of children in terms of more positive commitments, and attacks on traditional levels of child labor may have had the same effect. Nevertheless, actual discussions of children in terms of happiness surfaced

surprisingly slowly. There were some references in England, around 1800, but nothing very systematic. A few poems about infant joy, some intellectuals’ comments about children’s “freshness and wonder” barely suggested some new thinking. In the United States, references to children’s happiness crop up during the nineteenth century, but with a target on traditional moral upbringing, more than happiness per se (though it was interesting that the word was used): a variety of advice-writers urged parents that only through morality could children gain happiness: thus (in a famous manual by Catharine Beecher) “children can be very early taught that their happiness both now and hereafter, depends on the formation of habits of submission, self-denial, and benevolence.” Late in the nineteenth century, prescriptive literature increasingly mentioned the importance of cheerfulness in children, but while this was a new obligation in a society increasingly interested in pleasant human interactions, it was only a stepping-stone to a real association of childhood and happiness. The idea was that cheerful adults did best in life, so children should be handled in ways that would encourage this result. Finally, by the 1920s, a full commitment to children’s happiness, at least in

principle, emerged, at least in the United States. Childrearing manuals began to be peppered with statements such as “Happiness is as essential as food if a child is to develop into normal manhood or womanhood” and “The purpose of bringing-up in all its phases should be to make the child as happy as possible;” and book titles included How to Have Cheerful Kids (1927) or Child Training: The Pathway to Happiness (1948). Even discipline should

be reconsidered: better to let children get away with minor infractions than spoil their pleasure with a reprimand. The only question, in this growing American surge, was whether children were naturally happy, so that adults merely had to worry about not spoiling things, or whether there were challenges in children’s nature that adults had to work against, in which case the new commitment spelled some additional work for parents and others. Considerable advice, for example, was now directed toward urging mothers and fathers to work hard to seem happy around their kids, to provide positive example and context – whether they felt like being happy or not. Even government policy might convert: by the 1950s, White House conferences on children turned from issues of physical health to broader concerns with happiness. And new organizations for young people, such as the Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls, built happiness into their fundamental principles: the Campfire group, for example, simply urged “Be Happy” as their final directive. More than rhetoric poured into the new happiness movement in places

such as the United States. Having even very young children smile for photographs was an interesting implementation of the new campaign. A host of consumer practices, buying toys and entertainments for the young, obviously sought to fulfill happiness obligations. The Disney Company, born in the 1920s, took as its motto “make people happy,” and sold lots of movie tickets to families expecting precisely this result for their offspring. During the Depression-infused 1930s, a child movie star, Shirley Temple, was billed as the Sunshine Girl. Psychologists urged the importance of childhood happiness, and many adults would be prodded to explain their problems by reference to unhappiness in their early years, implying that this could and should have been avoided. Perhaps most revealingly, in terms of capturing the new prescription, the song “Happy Birthday” (using a tune written in the 1890s) surfaced in the mid-1920s; initially used for shows and singing telegrams, over the next two decades the verse became a standard symbol for what children deserved on a newly special day. The idea that children should be happy, then, is an innovation of recent

history, initially in Western societies probably headed by the United States. The notion is so deeply embedded by now that some may be surprised by this fact, assuming that the whole concept is somehow natural. The contrast with more traditional ideas and practices makes it clear that real innovation is involved. What caused the change? A number of factors conspired, but in fact it’s

not entirely easy to identify the most important spurs. We have seen that preconditions include a much lower death rate and the attacks on child labor (many of which, by the twentieth century, invoked happiness as a contrast to undesirable work burdens). Consumerism played a huge role, as companies of various sorts realized how much could be sold to parents as part of the fulfillment of happiness obligations. New beliefs about adulthood loomed

large as well, in societies that increasingly assumed that cheerfulness was a sign of mental health and a precondition for economic success. Compensation for the drudgery of schooling may have figured in as well, as parents, aware of the importance of school success, sought to motivate or reward kids with pleasures outside the classroom, and as schools themselves increasingly tried to make learning “fun.” Do these factors add up to a sense that a turn toward happiness is an

inherent part of the modern definition of childhood – or was it, rather, a product of a particular set of Western circumstances? The question is significant, the answer far more challenging. What is clear is that, in recent decades, many Western notions have been

adopted, or have more spontaneously developed, in a number of other societies, making children’s happiness an increasingly global topic. Not surprisingly, change has particularly involved more affluent and urban groups, particularly in societies where overall living standards continue to lag; but the theme is significant even so, as the ideas and behaviors continue to gain ground. Thus in the past 20 years or so the rapidly growing middle classes in India

have explicitly moved toward greater interest in children’s happiness. The website www.indiaparenting.com thus recommends “home-based birthday parties” with particular themes, adding that inviting a clown or a magician can help assure happiness. More generally, over 20 percent of parents in one Indian poll claim that children can and should be taught to be happy. The move away from an older view of childhood (after infancy) as a time of strict moral and religious training is considerable. Similar patterns emerge in the Middle East, apart from the strictest

Muslim groups. Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, features a “Favourite Things Mother and Child” shopping mall advertising itself as a premier site for a birthday party: with clowns, cotton candy machines, a petting zoo, and other entertainment centers, the site bills itself as “the first choice for parents who are looking for that personal touch, excellent organization, and a truly memorable day for their children.” Not surprisingly, a strongly competitive element enters into upper-class birthday celebrations. In Egypt also, lavish parties with decorations, singing, and dancing greet affluent children. Latin American families have widely embraced the idea of children’s hap-

piness, and here too the extensive adoption of elaborate birthday parties is one indication. Special emphasis on the fifteenth birthday, the Quinceanera, picks up an older cultural tradition, but the larger idea of the importance of a happy family extends well beyond this. For some groups, signs that children are happy help demonstrate that parents are meeting their obligations even amid poverty. Change is particularly striking in China, where birthdays were tradition-

ally downplayed (except for the sixty-fifth, which obviously celebrated old age in contrast to childhood), or even served as occasions for children to

bring humble gifts to their parents in gratitude. McDonald’s, for example, rents out “party rooms” for the new focus on children themselves, with trappings very similar to those in the United States. Beyond celebration, parents increasingly report that disciplining children has become a stressful aspect of parents (in contrast to just fifteen years ago), because of the desire to share happiness instead. All of this leads to the next question: how much of this is simply selective

emulation of the West, which could turn out to be temporary, and how much responds to other changes in the circumstances of childhood? A strong “westernization” element is undeniable. The Chinese parents

most likely to talk in terms of children’s happiness are those who have attended western-based workshops and conferences. Middle Eastern commitments to birthday parties come from social segments strongly influenced by Western consumer culture in other respects. On the other hand, westernization may not be the whole story. China’s dramatic birthrate reduction has produced parents increasingly anxious about the wellbeing of their child, both because he or she is the only one they have, and because they worry that contemporary children are missing out on fulfilling social experiences that they themselves remember growing up in larger families. Happiness here may seem to compensate for greater loneliness. In Japan and Korea, as well as China, strong emphasis on the importance of school success has helped parents accept responsibility for providing happiness as a legitimate need outside the classroom, to reward but also to compensate. Western models, in other words, may provide some slogans and practices that meet new and genuine needs that are part of modern childhood more generally. Time will tell about the durability and wider dissemination of new ideas and practices. One point is clear, which is a standard concomitant of mutual cultural

influences: while Western experience promotes new interest in children’s happiness in other societies, this interest is blended with local components as well. The spread of childhood happiness takes on varied comparative dimensions, even when a common theme of change is involved. Thus the happiness theme in India merges with the much older tradition

of extensive indulgence toward infants, showering love and attention in ways that many Westerners view as excessively permissive. What’s new is the extension of happiness concerns beyond this early period, but the merger has distinctive elements. Middle Eastern and, to some extent, Chinese interest in children’s happiness applies much more readily to boys than to girls, again reflecting older patterns. If only because the happiness impulse is newer in China, and partially foreign, discussions of the dangers of overindulgence are more extensive than in the contemporary West, and parents remain much more likely to be publicly critical of their children, particularly where school performance is concerned. Childhood happiness, in other words, is a real change, but it does not override local variants, reflecting a particular

version of the local/global tension standard in the experience of globalization more generally. The final question, applicable wherever happiness interests have acceler-

ated, involves what the new emphasis means, for responsible adults and for children themselves. There’s no doubt that the change has generated a range of consequences. Most obviously, for many adults involved, the pressure to provide toys and other consumer items for children has escalated steadily, supporting massive industries and redefining as least part of what it means to be a good parent. Shared pleasures can result, but also a sense of obligation and even guilt – when children’s happiness does not seem adequate – that can complicate the appreciation of parenthood. Outright manipulation adds to the complexity, as many companies, including Disney, explicitly train sales personnel to convince both adult and child customers that they are having a happy time, whether or not this is the case; some observers worry that the artificiality of consumer happiness can dull the capacity to identify the real thing. The big issue, of course, is whether children are happier now that they’re

expected to be. Some observers note that some of the drawbacks of childhood remain constant – lack of power, the stresses of growing up physically and mentally – so that all the happiness rhetoric imaginable cannot really have much impact. Others would add that specifically modern features, such as school tensions or lack of spontaneous play time, may actually make the attainment of happiness more difficult. The fact is that measuring happiness across historical time is virtually impossible, and judgments about childhood may be particularly challenging. The narrower question involves the impact of the happiness push itself.

On the one hand, many adults really do try harder to please children, and to avoid children’s discomfort, than their counterparts did in the past, and that may certainly have some effect. On the other hand, the happiness culture itself generates drawbacks. It makes children more dependent on entertainment, readier to declare boredom. It encourages parents, at least in some societies, to think of relationships with their offspring in excessively consumerist terms, buying lots of stuff but stepping back from deeper emotional contact. Above all, for children themselves, the new expectations of happiness undoubtedly make it more difficult to express or acknowledge sadness or disappointment, some of which arguably goes with the territory of childhood anywhere, anytime. A sad child now makes adults feel guilty, which in turn can encourage the child to conceal, which in turn can lead to outright depression that might otherwise have been avoided. Childhood depression is undeniably on the rise. Some of this simply involves new levels of diagnosis – the whole concept of depression entered psychiatrists’ diagnostic manual little more than a half-century ago. But some may be quite real, triggered by new modern pressures on children, but also the ironic constraints generated by happiness goals themselves.