ABSTRACT

Physical spaces are a measure of any society's attitude toward children. To picture the ways in which childhood has changed in the West, we need to imagine this society without the physical spaces for children that began to proliferate during the early modern period, multiplied during industrialization, and spread across the world during imperial expansion. In the historical past, children used houses, streets, yards, shops, and other places made by adults as spaces in which to live, play, learn, and work. They continue to do so. But, in 1500 it would have not been possible to find a house with a child's bedroom, a neighborhood with a playground, or a city with a public high school. Special rooms for children appeared in houses as settings purposefully made for children became part of modern society (and pivotal to the construction of modernity in global society). Schools, orphanages, kindergartens, day care centers, hospitals, reform schools, and special prisons were built, as were playgrounds, summer camps, children's museums, and libraries. These physical spaces and a special material culture – cribs, high chairs, strollers, clothes, toys, books, and food – became means by which adults set out and put into effect their objectives for modern children and their childhoods.