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 United States of America (Newark, Delaware)

JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY

1992 - VOLUME 17, NUMBER 4
93.12.01 - English - Barbara A. HANAWALT, 
Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 
Minnesota 55455 (U.S.A.)
Historical Descriptions and Prescriptions for Adolescence (p. 341-
351)
The use of the term "adolescence" for any period other than the 
late 19th or 20th century has been much debated. Ariès denied that 
the medieval period has a life phase that could be described with 
such a term; others have argued that the term carries a 
particular, very modern meaning even if Augustine did use the term 
adolescentia. This introduction to a collection of essays on the 
history of adolescence shows that the life stage was a well 
recognized and defined one through the Middle Ages and into the 
modern period. While the modern period did not invent adolescence, 
it did modify the definition. Constants in adolescence from the 
13th through the 20th century are the struggle between adults and 
youth over entry and exit from adolescence and for control during 
that period. But much changes over the centuries. Social 
scientific discussions that aid in our historical analysis are 
almost entirely based on the male rather than the female 
experience. While cultural change modifies the male definitions of 
adolescence, the medieval and 20th-century definition of female 
adolescence stays closer to biological than social definitions of 
puberty. (ADOLESCENCE, LANGUAGES, CULTURE)
93.12.02 - English - Kathryn L. REYERSON, 
Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 
Minnesota 55455 (U.S.A.)
The Adolescent Apprentice/Worker in Medieval Montpellier (p. 353-
370)
This study explores the experiential dimensions of apprenticeship 
and work as part of the adolescent life phase in 14th-century 
Montpellier on the basis of approximately 200 surviving notarial 
contracts. The strong role of family in apprenticeship of young 
men and women, the acquisition of specific occupational skills, 
character formation, and the well-being of the apprentice/worker 
are discussed. Apprenticeship for Montpellier youth represented a 
lengthy (early teens to late 20s) and elaborate transition between 
childhood and adulthood). (FRANCE, ADOLESCENCE, APPRENTICES, 
HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY)
93.12.03 - English - Stanley CHOJNACKI, 
Department of History, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 
Michigan 48824 (U.S.A.)
Measuring Adulthood: Adolescence and Gender in Renaissance Venice 
(p. 371-395)
The prescriptive threshold of adulthood among late-medieval 
Venetian patricians appears very different for men and for women, 
centering on social (i.e., public) puberty as the gauge of male 
adulthood, physiological (i.e., childbearing) puberty that of 
female. Yet in practice men did not inevitably achieve the 
normative patriarchal outcome of a graduated, formalized 
adolescence; nor did adolescence end for all women with teenaged 
marriage and motherhood. Non-patriarchal male adulthoods and the 
graduated phases of the uxorial cycle for women modify the 
impression of sharp gender contrast that results from viewing age 
at marriage as the pivot of adulthood. Graduated adulthood in both 
sexes gave men and women alike the possibility of varied adult 
identities, responding to a range of choice and circumstance. 
(ITALY, ADOLESCENCE, ADULTHOOD, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY)
93.12.04 - English - Mary Jo MAYNES, 
Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 
Minnesota 55455 (U.S.A.)
Adolescent Sexuality and Social Identity in French and German 
Lower-class Autobiography (p. 397-418)
Although sexuality has become a subject of interest to historians, 
sexuality among the lower classes has too often served as a 
"natural" foil for the more explicitly historicized sexuality of 
the propertied classes. This study of the adolescent sexual 
experiences portrayed in 19th-century European workers" 
autobiographies suggests important variations in popular sexuality 
that followed the contours of gender, chronology, and milieu. 
Moreover, the sexual identity that was established in adolescence 
was linked to other aspects of social identity and life 
trajectory. (FRANCE, GERMANY, EUROPE, ADOLESCENCE, SEXUALITY, 
HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY)
93.12.05 - English - Kathleen ALAIMO, 
Department of History, St. Xavier University, Chicago, Illinois 
(U.S.A.)
Shaping Adolescence in the Popular Milieu: Social Policy, 
Reformers, and French Youth, 1870-1920 (p. 419-438)
This article examines the emergence of a modern concept of 
adolescence in France during the early Third Republic and its 
influence on social reform policies designed for youths from the 
popular classes. The author looks at reforms in the areas of 
general education, labor, vocational education, and juvenile 
corrections in order to demonstrate the growing official awareness 
of adolescence as a distinct and unique stage of life. The author 
suggests that vigilant adult supervision, institutional 
representation, as well as expert articulation of a psychology of 
adolescence characterize the modern notion of adolescence that 
developed in the decades around 1900. (FRANCE, ADOLESCENCE, SOCIAL 
POLICY, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY)
93.12.06 - English - J. Robert WEGS, 
Department of European History, University of Notre Dame, South 
Bend, Indiana (U.S.A.)
Working-class "Adolescence" in Austria, 1890-1930 (p. 439-450)
Building on previous work of John Gillis, Joseph Kett, Harry 
Hendrick and others, this article examines evidence from a 
country-Austria-included only minimally in the debate concerning 
adolescence and focuses on the conceptual aspects of the debate as 
reflected in the attitudes and actions of those authorities 
responsible for "creating" or "discovering" an adolescent life 
phase at the turn of the century. The argument is that the modern 
adolescent image was created as a result of authorities' attempts 
to institutionalize the offspring of the poor initially to remove 
a "threat" to society and later as a result of new social-
scientific theories about youth development. (AUSTRIA, 
ADOLESCENCE, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY)
93.12.07 - English - W. Scott HAINE
The Development of Leisure and the Transformation of Working-class 
Adolescence, Paris 1830-1940 (p. 451-476)
The evolution of the pastimes of Parisian working-class youth 
between 1830 and 1940 reveals the interconnection between the rise 
of modern leisure and the development of modern adolescence. Two 
striking images halfway between literature and sociology, the 
gamin and the apache, illuminate the transformation of working-
class adolescence from social and spatial exclusion during the 
1830s to exclusivity by the 1900s. By the Belle Epoque, working-class 
adolescents had articulated their own subculture through the 
abundant and varied diversions of "the city of light": dance 
halls, cafés, cinemas, sports, and newspapers. The growing sense 
of exclusivity among working-class adolescents, however, 
undermined a wider sense of class consciousness. Working-class 
youth, especially after 1900, increasingly identified more with 
leisure and youth than with work and class. In general, the work 
place ceased to be a site where expression and creativity could be 
exercised and instead became an instrument, a means to an end: the 
wage. (FRANCE, ADOLESCENCE, WORKING CLASS, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY)


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