The Experience of North American Children

The Experience of North American Children

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to enlighten the factor that plays a significant role in determining the experience of North American children prior to 1920. According to diverse sources, there are varieties of factors that influenced the North American children experience prior to 1920; however, the race, class and gender are the most crucial factors influencing the scenario. Nevertheless, the paper also discusses changing economic and sentimental value attached to children and the emergence of the “economically 'worthless' but emotionally 'priceless'” concept in North America. Finally, the paper also evaluates the extent to which “child-saving” should be seen as a humanitarian effort, and to analyze the extent should it be seen as a form of social control.

After winning its independence from Great Britain, the United States was a federation of states that retained many rights, including the right to look after their own poor. After the independence of the United States there were varieties of problems faced by the United States. The North Americans started to migrate to the United States in search of better job opportunities and livelihood. As a result, individual states and territories enacted poor laws that resembled those of the colonial era. The urban slums which were the resident areas of North Americans nurtured cholera, typhus, and other diseases due to the enhanced immigration and lack of resources to cope with the growing concerns. Hence, the North American children were born into urban poverty died of intestinal maladies, contagious diseases, or trauma in the first year of life.

Prosperity proved especially elusive for the men, women and children who immigrated to North America as indentured servants. Most of these individuals, who contracted to labor for a colonial master for three to five years in exchange for their passage, were fleeing poverty in Europe. They reached North America without assets, accumulated nothing during their period of indenture, and thus began life as free Americans without capital and possibly without a trade. An estimated 500,000 people entered indentured servitude in the British colonies voluntarily, and one-tenth that number served sentences as colonial indentured servants for crimes committed in Great Britain.

The Impact of Class on the Experience of North American Children

There are several factors that influenced the experience of children prior to 1920; nevertheless, the most significant factor among them is class that affected the experience of North American children. In the United States, the efforts to cut costs led to crowding in institutions, the crime rate enhanced and the child labor increased. The North American children in this environment were exposed to the vices thought to contribute to poverty and kept in contact with their parents, whom society considered incompetent and irresponsible. The social class of the family influenced the child's experience and lifestyle as the deprivation of the basic needs revealed negative consequences for the North American children. An alternative solution in many places was the orphan asylum, an institution that housed the North American children dependent on ...