| Abstract |
"In 1870, at the start of the French Third Republic, the average working-class child entered the workforce after completing primary school, and sometimes before. Boys toiled in print shops and girls spent their days sewing. In its first decades, the Republic prioritized protecting these youngsters. Motivated by new ideas about childhood, lawmakers expanded access to education, regulated child labour, and developed child welfare. These policies defined childhood as a distinct, standardized stage of life. Legislators and reformers established institutions, such as vocational schools and juvenile courts, to promote children's development. However, in 1940 at the Republic's close, the average working-class child entered the workforce in his or her teenaged years. As An Age to Work demonstrates, the Republic's enactment and enforcement of age-based regulations reinforced class- and gender-based divisions in the experience of childhood. Through regulating age, legislators encoded a specific path to adulthood for working-class children, one that led to the workforce. The agents of the republican welfare state, such as social workers or labour inspectors, protected young people while policing their productivity. The regulation of childhood too affirmed the separation between girls and boys, as girls' work tended to slip outside the purview of the state. An Age to Work enters into the streets and apartments of working-class Paris to examine how the labouring classes envisioned childhood. For working-class parents, childhood was more fluid. But while they resisted the government's efforts to standardize childhood, they too used the republic's welfare institutions to direct their offspring to the workforce"-- Provided by publisher. |
