Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children

"When I started working on children’s issues, I kept thinking about the very contrasting cultural ideas that we have about children: the assumptions that we make in the West about what is good for children, what’s bad for children, how we should and shouldn’t be rearing them. Think of all the trade books there are on raising children. I was a ‘Truby King baby’ and raised by a strict regime. I don’t know who the guru is now, but there is always a guru, and parents are always following them. This is a beautifully written book. It’s a really easy read. What it does is articulate how incredibly powerful our normative ideas are around children. She traces the history of thinking about children in the United States, based on documentary evidence like changing laws on child labor. She charts this dramatic transition from a time when children were useful, contributing members of households, earning income, all the way to now, when they’ve become emotionally priceless. They no longer contribute or add economic value. They’re entirely dependent on their families. They’ve become absolutely priceless and useless at the same time. In the West, this transition happened between the 1870s and the 1930s. We take for granted that children have always been the way we think of them now, but they absolutely weren’t. “They’ve become absolutely priceless and useless at the same time.” David Rosen has done similar work, tracing the role of child soldiers. Historically, they were heroes. Now it’s been prohibited through international treaties. To recruit children into combat is considered to be one of the biggest crimes that can be committed. These massive transformations are actually now taking place in developing countries. What was happening historically in the United States, is now beginning to take place, particularly amongst the middle classes in developing countries. But along the way, it is very, very complicated because children are increasingly emotionally invested and priceless, but, at the same time, they still do need to play economic roles. They do need to contribute to their families because there isn’t the same welfare state in most contexts. You can’t afford to have members of a family who are just depending on you. That’s exactly my point. We are now seeing rising rates of mental illness among young people, attempted and actual suicides and eating disorders. In places like Korea and Japan, we are seeing pathologies in children that would historically only ever have been associated with adults: high blood pressure, hair loss related to stress. Expectations of children, the pressures on them to perform well in school are so high, in many cultures, that we are introducing all kinds of social problems that didn’t exist historically. We’ve got these very powerful assumptions now. We really believe we’re right — to the point where we have an instrument, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which, although it is very broad and quite generalized, is actually being interpreted in particular ways by people who really feel they have some kind of cultural superiority in relation to other groups. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I like this book because it reminds us that we, too, came from somewhere else in our thinking. Presumably, historically, we thought we got it right. We now think we’ve got it right, but actually we’ve got children and babies in advertisements, we’ve got baby fashion, fashion shows and competitions, girls wearing high heels, having pierced ears and wearing make up at the ages of 6 and 7. We’ve got toys that are outrageously expensive. Toys, in themselves, ought to be questioned. That’s the whole point of the Colin Ward book: children don’t need toys. It’s not that they’re not good, it’s that they’re not necessary. They’re a cultural product. We think they are necessary. So many of the things we think of as being necessary for children are just to do with our particular set of normative assumptions. That’s the argument, which is what this book makes in a really nice way. It was very influential."