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Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children | 
 enlarge | Author: Viviana A. Zelizer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.95
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You Save: $18.45 (64%)
New (15) Used (19) Collectible (1) from $7.49
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 398359
Media: Paperback
Pages: 296
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0691034591
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.230973
EAN: 9780691034591
ASIN: 0691034591
Publication Date: August 8, 1994
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Product Description
In this landmark book, sociologist Viviana Zelizer traces the emergence of the modern child, at once economically "useless" and emotionally "priceless," from the late 1800s to the 1930s. Having established laws removing many children from the marketplace, turn-of-the-century America was discovering new, sentimental criteria to determine a child's monetary worth. The heightened emotional status of children resulted, for example, in the legal justification of children's life insurance policies and in large damages awarded by courts to their parents in the event of death. A vivid account of changing attitudes toward children, this book dramatically illustrates the limits of economic views of life that ignore the pervasive role of social, cultural, emotional, and moral factors in our marketplace world.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A classic May 7, 2006
Aaron Swartz
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When one begins reading about the history of childhood, one book is almost universally cited: this one. And with good reason -- it's a clear compelling study of a surprising change in the way children were viewed. Each chapter picks a particular topic (child labor, child burial, wrongful death) and amasses copious evidence to show a massive change in the way children were viewed, from purely economic actors (who aided with their parent's work) to priceless bundles of joy.
The evidence is artfully collected but hearing the same story again and again gets to be a little old. I wish that instead of simply amassing more evidence, Zelizer stepped back a little and investigated the causes of such a massive change or at least provided us with more details about her theory.
 The shifting value of children May 14, 2000
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
In this thoroughly researched and well-written book, Zelizer tackles a formidable and important subject: the shifting economic and social value of American children. Her point of entry into the discussion of the history of childhood rests on a clearly defined thesis: as the economic value of children decreased in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, children's emotional and spiritual value gained ascendancy. Zelizar examines the vital roles of child labor and child work -- two very different, but related, concepts -- in the formation of the modern American child, neatly and compellingly charting the relationship between the nineteenth-century forebear and its twentieth-century counterpart. For example, the early twentieth-century child factory laborer represents the concept of child labor -- children who help to support their family by turning over their wages and working extra hours. The mid-to-late-twentieth-century child indulges in "child work" such as baby sitting or delivering papers, often earning an allowance he or she can keep since the object is to teach a child the values of money and responsibility. Zelizer offers explanations and rationales for such phenomena as the early twentieth-century rise of playgrounds in urban areas, the struggle of child actors to keep their hard-earned fortunes, and the history of the rise of black-market babies in the twentieth century. Zelizer's study is compelling for any reader and a must-read for anyone interested in children's history or children's literature.
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