What is childhood? How long does it last? How should we raise our children? These questions have long challenged parents, educators, and philosophers. The answers have varied with time, culture, region, and other factors. The clothes, toys, and other "stuff" of American childhood were chosen and used in response to ideas and practices of childcare. Those artifacts that survive can act as clues to the attitudes of their time. No exhibit can document the actual experience of American childhood in its vast variety across two thousand miles, three hundred years, and multiple cultural traditions, but we can examine some of the surviving artifacts, with help from childcare manuals and images of the past, to understand the changing cultural ideals.

Attitudes and beliefs about babies have changed throughout history. Until the middle 1700s, infants were assumed to have less feeling and little ability to respond to their environment. Infancy was a period not only to be survived, but passed over into an age of reason as quickly as possible. Babies were loved, but babyhood was not appreciated.

The role gender played throughout childhood is explored in the exhibition by looking at how the sexes were dressed. It is a falsehood that during the 1800s parents dressed boys as girls. Boys under the age of seven were dressed in clothes that, to us, look like girl's clothing, but in most cases there were slight differences that made it clear, to people living at the time, that the child was a boy.

Parents and educators had a firm idea of which kind of toys were appropriate for boys and for girls. It was important to prepare children early for their roles and behavior later in life. Toys were chosen accordingly. On the whole, fewer toys belonging to boys survive than those belonging to girls. This is partly because boys play often involved active games that required no toys or involved everyday things such as a log and plank for a see-saw. Military toys, toys that move, toys to build with, toys that required hand-eye coordination: these are the types of toys thought appropriate only for boys.

As children were increasingly valued by parents and society, the commercialization of childhood was inevitable. By the turn of the twentieth century, children were regarded as precious and fragile beings who must be sheltered from the adult world's dangers and corruption, so that toys and books which prolonged their innocence were encouraged. With the average family size declining, parents were able to focus more energy and spend more money on each child. Factories produced a variety of consumer goods designed to appeal to the doting middle class parents. Manufacturers linked parental love with the need for spending money on material goods for children, and Christmas especially became increasingly commercialized.

GENERAL INFORMATION

DAR Museum, 1776 D Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, Metro stops at Farragut North (Red) and West (Orange and Blue). The museum is open 8:30 am to 4:00 pm weekdays and from 1:00 to 5:00 pm on Sundays. Closed Saturdays and federal holiday weekends. Admission is free. For more details the public can call 202-879-3241 or email the museum at [email protected]. The web site address is http://www.dar.org/museum.

CURATOR

Alden O'Brien graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History, and from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City with a Master of Arts degree in Museum Studies in Costume and Textiles. She was assistant to the conservator on the First Ladies project, and assistant to the curators of the nineteenth century Life in America exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution. Ms. O'Brien has been at the DAR since 1990 as Associate Curator of Costume and Dolls. She has been curator of two exhibitions at the DAR Museum: "American Women, American Fashion," in 1996, and "Costume Myths and Mysteries" in 1998.

The DAR Museum was established in 1890, the year the DAR was founded. The collection is comprised of 33,000 decorative and fine arts objects made or used in America before the Industrial Revolution. The items are displayed in two galleries and 32 period rooms, which trace the development of home, business and social life in early America and reveal how lifestyles have changed over 300 years. From exciting interactive family programs to thought- provoking lectures, the DAR Museum invites students and families to participate in its many educational programs.