ABSTRACT
Eorts to dene race and gender dierences as natural bases for subordination remained contentious because there were multiple contradictory assertions about the character of races and genders. In contrast, children were successfully dened as natural dependents who needed to be cared for by adults as they developed in stages from primitive babies to rational adults (see Figure 7.1). Children had not always been seen this way. Before modernity, children were mostly seen as small adults. And as modernity developed, descriptions of childhood gained many variants-as divergent as conceptions of race. It seemed as though childhood would remain a contentious category, but theories of child development successfully naturalized diverse conceptions of the child, attributing dierent characteristics to children as they matured.
