Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society

The publication of The Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society is another signal indication of a new interdisciplinary vitality surrounding the research into the lives of children and youth. This excellent three-volume reference work draws its coherence from the intellectual trajectory originating from the important and productive intersections between the discipline of history and various subfields among the social sciences in the United States during the 1970s. The Encyclopedia institutionalizes this more-neglected social history trajectory in child and youth studies, one of the two major interdisciplinary constellations that inform the current renewal of interests in the comparative studies of young people.

The Encyclopedia is the second major collaborative work on the history of children and childhood that Paula Fass has edited and published in the last three years. In tune with the previously published Childhood in America anthology (co-edited with Mary Ann Mason, 2000), the Encyclopedia's 336 authors and 10 editorial members are among the most well-known scholars in this area of historical research, ranging from Natalie Zemon Davis and Viviana Zelizer to Miriam Forman-Brunell and Kriste Lindenmeyer to Kelly Schrum and Lisa Jacobson. In the spirit of full disclosure, the author of this review also wrote one of the 445 entries.

The majority of the entries are generated from topics in U.S. and western European social, cultural, and institutional history subfields, with a substantial number of entries containing a global and/or comparative perspective in varying degrees. Alternatively, some broad topics are broken into multiple entries that also reflect global, transnational, or comparative frameworks. For instance, the topic of social welfare is divided into two entries, one dealing with history and a second on comparative twentieth-century developments, and the topic of juvenile justice is divided between an international and a U.S. entry. Also reflecting both the interdisciplinary and global intentions of the project, a significant number of entries address contemporary topics or topics usually taken up in fields other than history (e.g., photographer Anne Geddes; in vitro fertilization) or topics from nations, social groups, or practices outside of the U.S. and western Europe. For instance, the Encyclopedia contains several entries that focus exclusively on nations or regions outside