Child with purple plastic doll near Kumasi, Ghana

Why I Taught the Sources

A number of societies in Eastern Africa, including the Maasai, divide the male life-cycle into distinct stages: childhood; murranhood (or "warrior"); and elderhood. Age-set societies like the Maasai are perhaps unusually explicit in the way that they divide up the life cycle whereas other societies find different ways of socialising the young and managing generational tension. Among the Maasai, the stages are marked by a series of graduation and retirement ceremonies that emphasize the growing cohesion of the generational group and its changing relation to others.

I use three texts on the Massai murran with upper level or seminar classes dealing with youth, either in a specifically African context or more generally in world history. The first is a travel account entitled Through Masai Land by Joseph Thompson. The second is an official report written by Clarence Buxton, District Commissioner, Narok, to the Officer in Charge on the Masai Reserve in July 1935 after a murran riot. The third contains field notes from interviews with elders about events under colonization. The interviews were conducted by historian Richard Waller and took place in 1973.

Since the texts are, essentially, about the way that social maturation is controlled and contested, there are comparative possibilities. I ask students to consider the contrasting natures of the types of sources and to think about how they might be contextualized and assessed. The variety of sources and their separation in time—from 1880 to 1973—offer a number of critical perspectives about processes of change.

How I Introduce the Sources

I generally introduce primary materials towards the middle of a course. Students need to acquire a degree of familiarity with the subject matter before they can make full use of unfamiliar materials. As they gain confidence, their grasp improves and they begin to understand the importance of primary sources for historians and become engaged in the process of interpretation. They learn how to "listen" to a text – for what it is not saying as well as what it is saying. In the process, they learn how to identify and analyze bias and subtexts.

Students read the texts before class discussion. I generally divide a class into a number of small working groups. Each is given either one text or one theme to explore in depth. Because all group members have read the three different texts, we are able to discuss how primary sources, like the secondary literature, have an internal logic that only appears if the entire text is examined.

Reading the Sources

I provide background material and present some of the ideas leading to the major theme of youth culture and its context through an interrogation of its construction. I also pose preliminary questions for students to think about when reading these sources. For example, I ask students why Thomson places young men center-stage in his travel account, with only a few dismissive paragraphs about middle-aged men. Were these young men, the murran, simply more visible, assertive, and flamboyant? Why the long descriptions of dress? Does this reflect readers' expectations of the exotic or the essence of murranhood as experienced by the Massai? Was Thomson more confident in describing what he saw than what he was told (through interpreters)?

I then ask for comparisons with the second document, the 1935 report written by Clarence Buxton, the British official who served as District Commissioner in Narok after a murranriot. Murran are still central, but does he see them in quite the same romantic way? Have they become archaic obstacles to progress? Has Buxton, any more than Thomson, sufficient understanding of language and culture to understand what he is seeing and being told? Comparing this report with Thompson's reminiscences, I ask whether they are really talking about the same thing.

In the third source, the interview field notes, is the elders' understanding of events and their significance different from Buxton's? What were the elders trying to convey to the interviewer about generational relations? I also ask students to consider what shifts occurred over time between these two narratives. Did the aggressive and self-confident warriors of 1880 become the defensive and hostile teenagers of the 1930s? Or did two different authors in two different times interpret the actions of the murran in different ways? What other factors, including external changes as well as the different narrators and kinds of documents, might be involved in these different perceptions?

Reflections

Although anthropologists and historians have not generally done so, it is possible to see murran as youth gangs: Maasai elders and British administrators would not have disagreed. Like gang members elsewhere, Maasai murran create a world and a group identity for themselves apart from "the mainstream."

In some respects, the murran whom Thomson met were not dissimilar from those that Buxton dealt with. In the 1880s, the Maasai had been at the height of their power yet much had changed in the intervening fifty years. Over time, the Maasai lost much of their grazing lands and were confined within a Reserve under colonial rule. Raiding had been outlawed, and the martial virtue of the murran, useful to the British during their conquest of what became Kenya, seemed both archaic and threatening in a time of colonial law and order. The balance of power between murran and elders had also shifted in favour of the latter. Defiant before, angry young men now saw their world threatened and themselves marginalised. They were more obviously subservient to and dependent upon their elders than before.

The Maasai struck back to maintain their honour and their way of life in a series of risings, against a background of calculated disobedience and refusal. After the risings in 1918 and 1922, the British administration decided, in effect, to abolish murranhood, but the attempt failed. By the early 1930s, the administration began to experiment with a modified form of "managed murranhood," allowing young men to be murran for a limited period with supervision.

Sympathetic administrators like Buxton saw that youth must have a space and hoped that its energies and competitiveness might be channelled and controlled by working for the community and perhaps by organised sport. Experience showed, however, that murran could be suppressed but not tamed, and young men, uncertain about their future, continued to "give trouble" to the end of the colonial period and beyond.

. . .[In] X v the United Kingdom (No. 7212/75 referred to above) the Commission found that an objective and reasonable justification existed for the different ages of consent, there being a realistic basis for the Government's opinion that, given the controversial and sensitive nature of the question involved, young men in the 18-21 bracket who were involved in homosexual relationships would be subject to substantial social pressures which could be harmful to their psychological development. . . .

The Commission, however, observes that its Report in X. v. the United Kingdom is now nearly 20 years old. While it is true that the views expressed in that Report have been subsequently repeated, it is also true that major changes have in the meantime occurred in professional opinions - particularly those of the medical profession - on the subject of the need for the protection of young male homosexuals and on the desirability of introducing an equal age of consent. . . . In particular, . . . the Council of the British Medical Association (BMA), which in 1981 gave evidence to the Policy Advisory Committee that boys and girls of the same age did not possess the same degree of emotional and psychological maturity, observed in 1994 that most researchers now believed that sexual orientation was usually established before the age of puberty in both boys and girls and referred to evidence that reducing the age of consent would be unlikely to affect the majority of men engaging in homosexual activity, either in general or within specific age groups. The BMA Council concluded in its Report that the age of consent for homosexual men should be set at 16 since the then existing law might inhibit efforts to improve the sexual health of young homosexual and bisexual men. . . .

Two such principal arguments emerge from the speeches in Parliament and are adopted and repeated in the Government's submissions. In the first place it is argued that certain young men between the ages of 16 and 18 do not have a settled sexual orientation and that the aim of the law is to protect such vulnerable young men from activities which will result in considerable social pressures and isolation which their lack of maturity might cause them later to repent: it is claimed that the possibility of criminal sanctions against persons aged 16 or 17 is likely to have a deterrent effect and give the individual time to make up his mind. Secondly, it is argued that society is entitled to indicate its disapproval of homosexual conduct and its preference that children follow a heterosexual way of life.

The Commission does not consider that either argument offers a reasonable and objective justification for maintaining a different age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts or that maintaining such a differential age is proportionate to any legitimate aim served thereby. As to the former argument, as was conceded in the Parliamentary debates, current medical opinion is to the effect that sexual orientation is fixed in both sexes by the age of 16 and that men aged 16-21 are not in need of special protection because of the risk of their being "recruited" into homosexuality. . . .

As to the second ground relied on - society's claimed entitlement to indicate disapproval of homosexual conduct and its preference for a heterosexual lifestyle - the Commission cannot accept that this could in any event constitute an objective or reasonable justification for inequality of treatment under the criminal law. . . .

Consequently, the Commission finds that no objective and reasonable justification exists for the maintenance of a higher minimum age of consent to male homosexual, than to heterosexual, acts. . . .

Petitioner, then a 17 1/2-year-old male, was charged with violating California's "statutory rape" law, which defines unlawful sexual intercourse as "an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a female not the wife of the perpetrator, where the female is under the age of 18 years." Prior to trial, petitioner sought to set aside the information on both state and federal constitutional grounds, asserting that the statute unlawfully discriminated on the basis of gender since men alone were criminally liable thereunder.

JUSTICE REHNQUIST, joined by CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, JUSTICE STEWART, and JUSTICE POWELL, concluded that the statute does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

(a) Gender-based classifications are not "inherently suspect" so as to be subject to so-called "strict scrutiny," but will be upheld if they bear a "fair and substantial relationship" to legitimate state ends. Because the Equal Protection Clause does not "demand that a statute necessarily apply equally to all persons" or require "things which are different in fact . . . to be treated in law as though they were the same," a statute will be upheld where the gender classification is not invidious, but rather realistically reflects the fact that the sexes are not similarly situated in certain circumstances.

(b) One of the purposes of the California statute in which the State has a strong interest is the prevention of illegitimate teenage pregnancies. The statute protects women from sexual intercourse and pregnancy at an age when the physical, emotional, and psychological consequences are particularly severe. Because virtually all of the significant harmful and identifiable consequences of teenage pregnancy fall on the female, a legislature acts well within its authority when it elects to punish only the participant who, by nature, suffers few of the consequences of his conduct.

(c). . . a gender-neutral statute would frustrate the State's interest in effective enforcement, since a female would be less likely to report violations of the statute if she herself would be subject to prosecution. The Equal Protection Clause does not require a legislature to enact a statute so broad that it may well be incapable of enforcement.

I'm running
Yes before it's too late
Trying to get away
From that jail bait

It's a rough temptation
But a common invitation
And a good association
But a quick elimination
That will take you out of circulation
Yes I'm talking about that younger generation

So take my advice fellas
For goodness sake
15, 16, 17 that's jail bait

Now they swear that they're in love
That you and her good stars above
And she's lookin mighty good
Just like a young girl should

Well we try to tell ya no
And let that young girl go
But you you know it all
You have yourself a ball

And now it is too late
As you look from cell number 8
I tried to tell you old mate
17 and 1/2 is still jail bait

So tomorrow's the date
For the trial of jail bait
And this you watch and see
The young girl will go free
And you'll get one to three

So out the door she walks
To another man she talks
Before you can count
From one to eight
Another man in for
Jail bait

Please mister judge
If you just let me go this time
I won't mess with them young girls no more
I swear I'm not gunna bother them Mister Judge

I ain't gunna bother nothin fifteen
I ain't gunna bother nothin sixteen
I ain't gunna bother nothin seventeen
I ain't gunna mess with none at eighteen

I'm gunna leave the twenty year old ones alone too
Gunna get me a girl about forty-two
If you just believe what I say Mister Judge Please Mister Judge I ain't gunna bother them young girls no more

Gimme a break Mister Judge

Of primary importance are the cases of statutory rape arising out of adolescent sexual experimentation. The sex play of adolescents is not limited by legislatures. The fact that a statute designates an act of sexual intercourse with a girl under eighteen as rape will not normally deter an avid boy friend even if he knows about the statute. There may be considerable doubt in many cases whether the girl wants the boy deterred, for she is usually is a willing partner to the intercourse. A girl may carry on sexually for some time with a boy friend and no complaint will be made by anybody. But when she becomes pregnant, or when he shifts his attentions to some other girl, or when the girl's relatives disapprove of the boyfriend, then a charge of rape is likely to be made. . . . There is growing recognition that it is unfair to characterize this situation, involving sexual experimentation of adolescents, as a felonious rape. In many of these cases grand juries simply refuse to indict and juries fail to convict, even though there may have been no question but that rape was technically committed. In New York, the legislature at the 1950 session made it possible to treat sexual intercourse of boys under 21 with girls under eighteen as a misdemeanor instead of a felony, as theretofore. The punishment prescribed became a normal maximum of one year instead of the ten-year maximum for statutory rape, as theretofore.

The history of childhood depends, to some extent, on understanding the history of home- and family-life, the primary context in which childhood occurs. In the U.S., the rise of the field known as "home economics" had an enormous impact on popular conceptions of children and what kind of care they require. The impressive HEARTH website offers the most comprehensive online collection of primary sources in the field of home economics from 1850 through 1950; a few sources, such as full-text articles from the Journal of Home Economics, are inclusive through 1980. Introductory material addresses the importance of home economics to women's history and children's history as well as its broad impact on American culture.

Materials are arranged into 11 broadly-defined topics; each is introduced with a short essay, an image, and a substantial bibliography of influential texts on that topic, in PDF format. The history of home economics is a relatively young discipline, so these bibliographies provide an especially valuable service. While only one of the site's self-designed subject headings (Care, Human Development, and Family Studies) appears at first glance to be relevant for historians of childhood and youth, in fact, the entire site has valuable resources to offer.

The field of Home Economics grew in concert with the popularity of the "scientific" approach to child-development. This approach influenced the systematization of public education, children's medical and psychological care, and the social studies of juvenile delinquency, among other topics. Indeed, Home Economics became one of the primary disciplinary venues through which child-study developed. Consequently, many subject bibliographies contain material relevant to the health, psychology, moral development, and education of children. Home economics was also a subject taught to young women in high schools and colleges for many decades, so a good share of the material on this site was read by female youths as part of their education.

To find material specific to the history of children and/or youth, start with the Browse page. This presents a list—fairly short now, but still growing—of available full-text journals. Clicking on the title of a journal leads to a list of all volumes and issue numbers for each year of publication; these, too, appear as hyperlinks, which lead to full-text articles. All issues of the journal Children, produced by the U.S. Government Publication Office from 1954 to 1971, for example, are reproduced in their entirety. One can scan the tables of contents for each issue and discover articles with intriguing titles such as "What Makes a Good Parent?" and "Mental Retardation in the Soviet Union".

The "Browse" page also indexes HEARTH's full-text holdings (journals and books) alphabetically by author or title. Unfortunately, the books are not categorized beyond this. A reader who does not already know specific titles or authors will find it time-consuming to scan these alphabetized lists—it is like searching for a book in a library by wandering through the stacks and gazing hopefully at the shelves.

The sole example of subject-categorization lies in the PDF subject-bibliographies. Alas, the PDF format is a poor choice. It prevents titles from appearing as hyperlinks, meaning that viewers cannot look at a bibliography and know which entries, if any, are available in full-text on the website.

The full-text books and journals at HEARTH can be used to explore a range of topics when teaching the institutional history of childhood, such as how various institutions like the government, public schools, hospitals, and social services, influenced American ideologies of home, family, and children. Students raised in late 20th century schools may find it remarkable, for example, that turn-of-the-century educators considered a child's moral development to be an imperative duty of schoolteachers. Felix Adler's The Moral Instruction of Children (1912), which can be read in full-text on the site, includes chapters on children's moral responsibilities, like "The Duties Toward All Men (Justice and Charity)" and "The Elements of Civic Duty." Adler also offers chapters on how to instill morals in children by using fables, fairy tales, and even Homer's Odyssey. This emphasis on character, duty, and citizenship bears only a scant resemblance to the modern-day emphasis on building students' "self-esteem" in K-12 teaching. A history teacher might use this text to prompt students to think about change over time in America's concepts of children's roles in society, and what children "need" to fulfill those roles.

Categories or strategies for searching would make these materials more user friendly for teachers and students, but barring that, the topics listed on the Subjects page or in the background essays provide a good starting point.